


Enigma

by Mal_ice (WickedIntentions)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - High School, Dubious Consent, F/M, Fs for Everyone!, M/M, Older Man/Younger Woman, Power Imbalance, Power Play, Punishment, Secret Relationship, Sexual Tension, Sickly!Obito, Slow Build, Tyranny in the Classroom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2019-10-27 18:04:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17771648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WickedIntentions/pseuds/Mal_ice
Summary: Mr. Madara Uchiha has a certain reputation that sends his unlucky new students scrambling for a transfer on the very first day of each semester. Sakura Haruno, one such unlucky new student, decides to give him the benefit of the doubt.





	1. First Impressions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is somewhat inspired by [_Madara-sensei!_](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10738146/1/Madara-sensei) by Of Healing Love on FF.net.

> His stare landed on her, and she was dismayed by how wholly apathetic he was. Then came the dreaded word. “Name?”

The new school year began—bright, early, and all too soon—at Konoha High School in late August at the conclusion of a lazy, relaxing summer break. With the rising sun spilling through the windows, bleary-eyed students streamed into the already crowded cafeteria, where they were directed to the class representatives who held their semester schedules. The lines for breakfast were packed, but many students just couldn’t stomach the thought of food so early in the morning and settled for craning their necks in search of familiar or friendly faces.

         Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha, and Sakura Haruno were several such students lucky enough to find a seat in the corner so they could observe the room as a whole and avoid being trampled by the bustle.

         Sakura made brief eye contact with Ino Yamanaka, who was in line to get her packet from the senior representative, and they shared a playfully competitive glance that plainly said, “I’m going to make better grades than you this year _and_ win Sasuke’s heart!” She sometimes struggled to define their complex relationship but felt comfortable that she could count on her ivory-blonde friend whenever she truly needed something.

         “Who did you guys get for Chemistry?” Naruto pored over his schedule. His freshly laminated school ID was tucked between his lips, rendering his question almost incomprehensible. It was unlike him to be so invested in his academics, and Sakura, pleasantly surprised, smiled at the sight. He spat the card into his hand and asked, “What about Honors English?”

         “Mr. Hatake,” Sasuke deigned to reveal. His schedule had long-since been folded and stuffed into his pocket, no doubt memorized in its entirety within the first couple minutes of receiving it. He was free to sneer at passersby and altogether project his disdain for the roaring din of several hundred different conversations taking place at the same time, but he tore his eyes away to stab Naruto with incredulity. “ _You’re_ taking Honors?”

         “Yeah, so? Eh. I got Mr. U-chi-ha,” Naruto enunciated with sing-song syllables. He blinked a few times, slowly. “Hey. Isn’t that your name, too?”

         Sasuke pressed a finger to his temple while Sakura looked on in exasperation. “Yes, _idiot._ My uncle is a teacher here.”

         “Well, why aren’t you in his class, then?”

         “Because we’re related,” he ground out.

         “Don’t worry, Naruto. I got Mr. Uchiha, too,” Sakura interjected to console him. He halfheartedly returned her smile.

         “You probably should worry.”

         She raised an eyebrow at Sasuke’s muttered comment and took the bait. “And why’s that?”

         He picked at a loose thread on his shorts for so long that she wasn’t sure he was going to answer. Finally, he told them, “You’re not going to like him. Trust me.”

         At that, Naruto fretted, grumbling under his breath, as he stared a hole through his schedule. The paper crumpled at the edges where his fingers dug into it. “Think it’s too late to ask for a transfer? I wanna be in Mr. Hatake’s class instead.”

         Sakura shot him an offended look at his tactlessness, but he didn’t seem to notice in his increasing agitation. She took pity on him because it was no secret that the boisterous blond struggled to keep up and relied on sympathetic teachers to earn grades high enough to pass his classes.

         Her offers to help him study for his tests, while appreciated, often went unpursued when it was more in line with his natural charisma to manipulate his way into a few “pity points” here and there to turn a high D into a low C. At times, Naruto forgot the simplest of mathematical formulas, but never did he fail to ultimately talk others into doing what he wanted. There was a career somewhere for such a skill, he repeatedly insisted, and there wouldn’t be any “triganomentary” involved in it.

         Sasuke laughed in his humorless, empty way. “Probably. He’s got a reputation. I bet a ton of people are lined up outside the guidance counselor’s office right now trying to get transferred before all the seats are gone.”

         Naruto squinted at him for a long moment. “Why have I never heard of this guy?”

         “You have—you just never listen.”

         “I listen!” he protested. “What’s he like? You’re making him out to be a complete hardass or somethin’.”

         “That’s one word for him.” Sasuke crossed his arms and stared at the floor from between his shoes. “He’s also the only teacher who actually takes his job seriously in this dump, so you won’t be able to slack off like you do.”

         Sakura, listening intently, knew family was a very delicate subject for him, and she absorbed the information with great relish. She held a small collection of facts that he had let slip through the years—particularly regarding his eldest brother, Obito, who was fragile and housebound. The arrangement took a toll on him and the middle brother, Itachi, and she pieced together that his uncle must have some hand in taking care of them. At the realization, she felt warm gratitude for him and his sacrifices and looked forward to meeting him in first block. She cheerfully swung her feet.

         “If he’s so great and all, why isn’t he teaching at K-Uni?”

         “Why don’t you ask him when you see him? It’s one of his _favorite_ questions.”

         Sakura bristled at the meaningful, cruel lilt in the suggestion and knew that it definitely was _not_ one of his favorite questions. She jumped in to say as much. “That’s probably not—”

         “—All right, I will!” To punctuate, Naruto balled up his schedule and tossed it into his backpack. He always rose to the challenge, and nothing she could say would dissuade him.

         Truthfully, she also wanted to know the answer. Anything Uchiha-related was worth her intrigue.

         The first warning bell was imminent when they integrated with the tide of students looking for their new classes. On their way past the front office, Sakura couldn’t help but notice there was, indeed, a notable line outside Mr. Umino’s office, but she seriously doubted it was because of Mr. Uchiha. It was only natural that friends would want to test their luck with transfers to try to get into classes with each other, especially for the last year of high school.

         With a light, optimistic step, she shadowed her friends up three flights of stairs to the senior floor. Dead-center sat the English classrooms, the two of them, positioned directly across the hall from each other. Sasuke departed without so much as a backward glance into the room on their right, designated as 4E-1, and Sakura jolted when a gloating Ino brushed by her with a flip of her mane and disappeared through the very same doorway.

 _Pig,_ she thought without malice. Despite herself, she grew envious that Ino had her first class with him. She shook it off and turned to the left classroom, 4E-2, where Naruto had already made himself at home somewhere near the middle of the staggered rows of tables facing Mr. Uchiha’s desk and the room-length whiteboard pinned up behind it. About twelve others, including two she recognized as Hinata Hyuga and Choji Akimichi, filled the back couple rows.

         Taking a moment to survey her surroundings, she immediately noted the absence of decor across the steel-gray paneling. Opposite the door, three large windows were drawn against the sun. She lamented the light and fresh air trapped behind the shutters but didn’t move to open them without permission. All in all, it was a coldly clinical atmosphere equipped for learning and little more. It didn’t bother her, and she chose her seat without a fuss.

         What _did_ bother her was how empty the other chairs around her were. By the time the second warning bell rung, they had yet to be filled, and Sakura knew, in that moment, that Sasuke hadn’t really been exaggerating. She entertained righteous annoyance on behalf of the absent Mr. Uchiha. They weren’t even going to give him a chance, were they? It was sickeningly disrespectful.

         When the infamous man himself walked in, Sakura’s first impression was of a vision of Sasuke in twenty years. Her second impression was that his hair was a very inappropriate length to be professional, but such a thought was easily discarded considering how glossy and well-kept the spiky locks that hung down his back were. He wore a charcoal suit with a buttoned-up shirt as dark as his hair. A black tie complemented the dismal palette, but it fit him in every sense of the word.

         Tittering near the back suggested that she wasn’t the only one who approved of their teacher’s immaculate appearance.

         Mr. Uchiha placed an unpeeled orange beside the things neatly arranged on his desk and flipped through his planner and gradebook. Officially, class had started, but he had yet to address them. With such a great absence of students, conversations were relatively quiet and continued on in the face of their teacher’s apparent indifference.

         Five minutes after the bell, he looked up at them with eyes the hue of molten onyx.

         Sakura perked up eagerly, wanting to make a good impression, herself. Her spiral notebook lay open to the first page, clean and ready, and her mechanical pencil was clutched in her hand and poised to write. She was a shameless teacher’s pet but didn’t consider it a negative trait. Her near-flawless grades and attendance attested to that.

         “Less of them every year,” Mr. Uchiha commented to himself in his deep, pleasing baritone. Sakura heard it only because she had chosen a seat in the very front row.

         “Oh, yeah. Hey, Mr. Uchiha, why’re you a high-school teacher?” Naruto suddenly demanded from two seats behind Sakura and to the right. “Shouldn’t you be a professor at K-Uni?”

         All chatter broke off, and silence reigned. Nobody dared to chime in or even move. Sakura looked on in mortification and turned her gaze back to the front of the classroom, where Mr. Uchiha had yet to answer. He seemed stunned by Naruto’s audacity, but he soon broke out of his stupor with a hard glint in his eye.

         “Name?” Mr. Uchiha asked.

         “What?” Naruto screwed up his face in confusion. “No, I asked—”

         “—What is… _your name?_ ” he emphasized slowly, as if he thought he was too stupid to understand the words in a complete sentence.

         “Oh, uh, Naruto Uzumaki!” he declared loudly and with pride.

         “Three months of before-school detention and an F for the day, Mr. Uzumaki. Gather your things and stand outside until your next class.”

         Sakura pressed a hand to her mouth in mute horror. Naruto sat ramrod straight, now the one who was stunned, and their classmates were in similar states of stupefaction. It seemed like everyone was waiting for Mr. Uchiha to rescind the punishment as a first-day jest, a way to break the ice, but the cold expression didn’t waver once. He wasn’t joking.

         When Naruto began to throw his book and pencil into his backpack with unnecessary force, Sakura snapped out of her daze and lifted her hand from her mouth to the air. She didn’t wait to be called on when she pleaded, “Mr. Uchiha, please, Naruto didn’t mean it like it sounded. Besides, that’s a really harsh punishment for just asking a question.”

         His stare landed on her, and she was dismayed by how wholly apathetic he was. Then came the dreaded word. “Name?”

         “…Sakura Haruno,” she whispered around a tight knot of fear. Her other hand, fallen limp around her pencil, tightened until her knuckles turned white.

 _My GPA!_ she mourned.

         “See me after class, Ms. Haruno.” He looked to Naruto, who stomped to the door. “You, too, Mr. Uzumaki. If you walk off without speaking to me, I’ll make sure your grades feel it all semester and well into college—should you even make it that far.”

         “Yes, _sir,_ ” he retorted snidely, retreating out to the hallway before his insolence could be addressed.

         “Let me make something clear,” Mr. Uchiha began in a deceptively even tone after the door slammed shut. “You’ve become accustomed to the substandard because your teachers have always been lazy and incompetent—”

         Across the hall, Mr. Hatake’s Honors English class had reason to celebrate, and a cacophony of laughter and conversation drifted through the door to interrupt the scathing lecture. Heads turned, and longing gazes were thrown.

         Mr. Uchiha paused for a few seconds to see if the noise would abate before deciding to speak over it. “Case in point. You’ll be disappointed to learn that I enforce numerous rules for my classroom, and you will take care to follow each one while you’re in attendance. If you cannot, expect to join Mr. Uzumaki in failing this class. And I’ll remind you that this is a core class, meaning it’s required for graduation. If I will it, you spend Christmas or summer with me, and, suddenly, it’s no longer funny when your diploma is in my hand instead of yours.”

         He scanned their tense and anxious faces for a hint of comprehension, but no one wanted to speak up to either agree with or defy him. With a bland, unimpressed look, he turned away to pick up one of his dry-erase markers.

         “Rule number one,” he said, writing something out in elegant Latin script, “no cell phones. You, young lady in the back, bring it up here. F for the day. You can sit in on my lecture or dismiss yourself; I don’t care which.”

         Sakura turned her head to thoroughly pity the brunette girl who trudged by, then returned her attention to the board, which now proclaimed “Madara Uchiha” in ominous black strokes like a terrible prophecy come to life. She shivered in dread.

         “Every afternoon,” Mr. Uchiha continued, capping his marker with a pointed snap, “my last class will clean this room from top to bottom. Every morning, my first class will _also_ clean this room from top to bottom. Every time I see someone slacking—in either class—I will randomly select a multiple-choice question on your final exam and transform it into an essay. For my ambitious troublemakers, there are one hundred possible essays to earn.”

         Against better judgment, the protests surged.

         “Aww, why do we have to clean? No other teachers make us do that!” Choji cried above the other voices.

         “I’ve already answered your question. If you had listened, you wouldn’t have needed to open your mouth and waste my time. Name?”

         “Choji Akimichi,” the rotund boy grumbled. “Let me guess—F for the day, out in the hall?”

         “On the contrary, I was under the impression that you singled yourself out for a noble reason. Find the janitorial closet just down the hall and collect the cart inside. You will do the cleaning on your own today while your peers attempt to learn something.” He jerked his chin at the door. “Off you go, Mr. Akimichi. And I suggest you don’t let yourself get sidetracked on the way back; we wouldn’t want you to miss anything important.”

         Sakura sank lower in her seat as a crimson-faced Choji stormed past her and left the classroom just as noisily as Naruto had. Chancing a glance at the clock, she was horrified to realize that roughly thirty minutes had passed and that they still had an entire hour to go. The day had only just started, and it was already shaping up to be a disaster. Oh, god, what would he assign for _homework?_ It was a truly terrifying thought even to a diligent scholar like her.

         “It seems this class is determined to teach me names by way of discipline,” Mr. Uchiha quipped, sardonic, before turning back around to the board. Mercifully, nobody else spoke out of turn for the entire lesson. Even Choji gritted his teeth when he returned and threw himself into his unsavory trial.

         Later, they were still hurting from his special flavor of tyranny, particularly Naruto, who spent most of the lunch hour alternating between sharing his feelings with anyone in earshot and shoveling his food in the most nauseating way imaginable.

         “Detention for three months! And he expects us to have half the book read by tomorrow! He wouldn’t even give me a copy; he told me to check it out of a library,” he heatedly ranted, drawing heads from all the way across the cafeteria. Breaking off for a few seconds, he took the time to chug from his cup, miraculously without choking. “Such an _asshole,_ man. Who has time to read, anyway?”

         Sakura was already thoroughly engrossed two chapters deep in the aforementioned assigned book and, once again, leveled an offended stare at her oblivious friend. Rolling her eyes, she returned to the text. Somehow, she escaped a branding of Mr. Uchiha’s favorite letter when she stayed to receive her punishment, and she was still reeling over it.

         “Pick your battles,” he had advised. “It would almost pain me to fail such a prospect. Almost.”

 _He already knows us,_ she realized with a start while mulling it over. He had looked into their student records and probably already knew their names. But why would he pretend otherwise—unless it really was some sort of sadistic game to him?

         “Oh, and he made Choji clean the whole damn room by himself. He’s probably still up there, too, stuck with Mr. Asshole and missing lunch. Gah, I can’t stand him!” Naruto all but shrieked.

         Sakura peered over her shoulder and spotted Choji happily chowing down with his friends but wisely refrained from pointing it out. Sasuke sat through the entire tirade with a blank-faced indifference painfully reminiscent of the man in question.

         He made no interjections until Naruto finally, _finally_ paused to take a breath and rest his mile-a-minute mouth. “Yeah? Try living with him.”

         “Wait, what? You have to live with that guy?!”

         “Madara was my legal guardian until this summer,” he reluctantly muttered. “So, yeah, I live with him. He’s even more delightful at home.”

         Sakura gnawed on her lower lip and stared, unseeing, at her book. While details of the Uchiha family were scarcely circulated throughout the student body, it was common knowledge that the three brothers had lost both of their parents on a solemn, wintry morning. The eleven-year anniversary crawled closer. It was none of her business—and Sasuke made sure she knew that, repeatedly, firmly, callously—but she still marked her calendar so she could spend a few minutes respectfully mourning their passing.

         As if on cue, an all-too-familiar voice penetrated their little social bubble. “Sasuke.”

         Confronted with the source of his antagonism, Naruto’s hackles rose, and he growled under his breath like some kind of provoked, feral beast. His chopsticks splintered audibly under the strain of his death grip.

         Sasuke wiped his face perfectly neutral and immediately got to his feet to bow to his newly arrived uncle. “Yes, sir?”

         Mr. Uchiha crossed his arms and dully asked, “Do you need a ride after school?” in a show of utter unenthusiasm, like he had a duty to perform but didn’t have to be happy about it.

         “No, sir.”

         “Then I will assume that’s always your answer. Should it ever change, come to my classroom at the end of the day. You’ll have until just after four o’clock.”

         “Understood.”

         Satisfied, Mr. Uchiha made to leave. Just before he fully turned away, he flicked his eyes over the book in Sakura’s hands with an unreadable expression. Not knowing why his interest unsettled her, she nervously flicked to the next page before she was finished with the previous one and bent her head over it with renewed vigor. She was keenly aware of his footsteps as they faded away, and only once they disappeared did she feel comfortable enough to stop pretending to read.

         “Yes, sir!” Naruto taunted as Sasuke sank back down. “No, sir, Mr. Uncle Madara Uchiha, _sir!_ ”

         “Shut the hell up.”

         “Does he send you out to the hall if you don’t finish all your veggies, Sasu—ke? Do you have to put out your homework for his inspection every night? Need a pass to go to the bathroom?”

         “God, you’re such a dumbass,” Sasuke spat, pushing up from the table. He plunged his fists into his pockets and began walking away without so much as a good-bye. “I’m outta here…”

         “Aw, come back!” With an apologetic smile aimed at Sakura, Naruto leaped after him. “I was just kiddin’… kinda.”

         She barely noticed, having thrown herself back into the reading with a strange determination to finish two more chapters before the end of lunch.


	2. High Standards

> “It’s not often that I have a pupil who isn’t an abject failure.”

“What’s this all about?”

         Sakura looked up at Naruto, who was sitting on top of Mr. Uchiha’s desk and squinting at something on the whiteboard. She leaned over to see what was hidden behind his big blond head. Underneath the words “Madara Uchiha” was a new addition: “IV.” He had spent an hour before school sitting in the room for detention but apparently failed to notice it before now, seven minutes until the second bell.

 _Day two._ She sighed. _Here we go._

         “Eye-vee. _Eye_ vee. Ivy?”

         “If I had to guess, it’s the Roman numeral for the number four,” Sakura helpfully informed him, adjusting her uniform skirt as she shifted back to her original spot. Although their assignment had been to read only half the book, she was easily three-quarters done with it and had trouble putting it down. What started as a challenge for herself had become legitimate interest in the story, a historical drama detailing a feud between two fictional clans.

         “Oh, thanks. What’s he countin’ up here, the number of sticks lodged in his ass?”

         “Nah, too small a number for that,” Choji interjected. Their classmates had been shamelessly eavesdropping and began snickering.

         Naruto offered a sheepish grin and shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Got me there.”

         “No, it’s probably how many people he caught slacking off yesterday,” Sakura said with a hint of irritation, “so we have four new essay questions on our final exam now. It’s only been _one_ day, guys! How can that be funny?”

         “…Huh?”

         She remembered that her friend had been sent out of the classroom and had no knowledge of it, so she quickly filled him in. Predictably, he grew upset and had to broadcast his thoughts to anyone listening. His voice had an unfortunate habit of cracking the higher it went.

         “That asshole!”

         In that dreadful moment, the classroom door snapped shut. “Remove your posterior from my desk immediately, Mr. Uzumaki.”

         Needless to say, Naruto accomplished it in two seconds flat. For all his bravado and belligerent, rampaging rebellion, he conveyed in that action an extreme intimidation, though he made no move to return to his seat as Mr. Uchiha unloaded his small burden, a stack of freshly copied and stapled papers and another orange. Sakura gave the innocent piece of fruit a sideways glance.

         “What’s with the number on the board, Mr. Uchiha?” the blond boy demanded.

         “I think Ms. Haruno explained it succinctly.”

         “But why do we have to be punished ‘cause of another class?”

         “Unity—one of the themes of the book you didn’t read yesterday.” Mr. Uchiha wryly quirked his lips.

         “The library didn’t have it!”

         “By ‘library,’ are you referring to your game console or, perhaps, refrigerator? I’d advise against lying to me. I went straight there after school and checked. They have three copies available.”

         Naruto faltered and helplessly squeezed his fists at his sides. He held his ground in an almost admirable display. With audible strain, he humbled himself and asked, “Can I get one of those books from you?”

         “Mm. Very well. But it won’t be much help to you today.”

         “What do you mean?”

         “Quiz time,” Mr. Uchiha declared to the class. From him, they sounded like the two most frightening words in the Japanese language. “You will answer twenty questions about chapters one through ten and write a paragraph predicting the story’s denouement. We’ll have a class discussion about themes and foreshadowing after everyone turns their quizzes in. Participation is mandatory and counts as a grade.”

 _Poor Naruto,_ Sakura worried as her friend slumped and dragged himself back to his seat. A cursory glance revealed that most of her peers were similarly despondent, and she wondered if anyone else had bothered doing the homework. Her pity extended only so far when confronted with blatant laziness, and she turned her shoulder on them.

         “Don’t slack,” he added, pointedly leaning back against the board, directly next to “IV” and a ready marker in the tray below it. “Ms. Haruno, pass out the papers.”

         She jolted at the sound of her name and scrambled to obey. Her eyes flitted up at him when she reached his desk and inadvertently made eye contact—briefly. She collected the stack of papers and turned away before she could allow herself to truly admire the contrast between his long lashes and pale skin as he blinked. He was a ridiculously handsome man.

         Forty minutes later, all quizzes were deemed finished whether they actually were or not. Sakura had already turned hers in twenty minutes before and struggled with the idle time. Due to the nature of the questions, she wasn’t allowed to pull out her book and read, so she discreetly examined the most interesting thing in the room and found herself composing a mental list of everything she liked about him.

         Beautiful hair, intense eyes, impeccable style, and an attractive rumble of a voice—they were superficial traits; she knew she could do better. A small part of her delved even deeper to acknowledge his commanding presence, vitriolic wit, and domineering personality. He could cut someone apart with words alone, and _that_ was more of a turn-on than it had any right being.

 _Stop it,_ she scolded herself, fighting a traitorous blush. She reasoned that she was projecting her unrequited feelings for Sasuke onto his even more untouchable uncle. Curiosity was justified when the two men looked so alike, but that was all it could ever be. _Why is my love life so unhealthy?_

         “Now, can someone list one of the prevalent themes, or do I need to stop and define the word ‘can’?”

         “Unity!” Naruto snarled, thumping a passionate fist on his tabletop.

         Sakura couldn’t help but smile at Mr. Uchiha’s charming snort.

* * *

Naruto’s ranting quickly became a daily lunchtime occurrence as he found more and more to complain about their English class “from hell.” Just when he thought it couldn’t get worse, Mr. Uchiha did something to raise the bar just a bit more and fling him into hysterics. Sakura prematurely feared its long-term effects on his blood pressure, but her attempts to calm him down were in vain.

         Sasuke had already reached his breaking point and took to frequently ignoring them—Sakura, too, even though she barely had chances to open her mouth before her blond friend commandeered their airspace once again. He had already made it clear that he got enough of his uncle at home and didn’t want it to carry into the rest of his day.

         “What’s Mr. Hatake’s class like, anyway?” Naruto asked when he finished bad-mouthing their teacher. “Does he give a lot of homework?”

         “Not really. He usually puts a movie on and reads some book. He fell asleep yesterday before he could give any work out, so we had free time.” Sasuke shrugged, but he obviously enjoyed the opportunity to gloat. His reward of a jaw-dropped, bulging-eyed stare was just icing on the cake.

         “That’s so not fair!” Naruto shoved his face into his hands and raked his fingers down his eyelids. “Ugh… this sucks so much. I’m gonna fail…”

         “Well, _I_ think it’s unfair that Mr. Hatake’s class isn’t learning a thing,” Sakura retorted haughtily. “Mr. Uchiha said he knows the English questions that will be on Konoha University’s entrance exam next year and will consider giving tips to anyone who asks about it after school today. Do you know how difficult it is?”

         “When’d he say that?”

         “Oh, sorry…” She ducked her head in shame. “I forgot you were in the hall during that.”

         “How could you forget?” Sasuke deadpanned. “Doesn’t that happen every day?”

         “Not _every day,_ ” Naruto growled in his own defense.

         “What happened this time? Didn’t finish your veggies, Naru—to?”

         “ _Shut up,_ Sasuke. You’re such a bastard—just like your uncle. No, wait, you’re even worse! So, there!”

         Sakura felt a sinister headache forming as her friends continued to hurl insults and struggled to block them out while she perused the schoolwork spread out in front of her. Being on a self-imposed diet, she had plenty of time after consuming her light lunches and chose to be productive. Ten days into the school year, Naruto and Sasuke had grown disinterested in teasing her for it.

         Compared to the rest of her classes—Anatomy and Physiology, Macroeconomics, and Civics, all honors—English homework seemed immense, but it wasn’t unreasonable in the grand scheme of things. Mr. Uchiha wasn’t wrong; their high school was notoriously lax in core coursework in favor of the more popular electives like sports and clubs and failed to prepare its students for college. Having even one teacher so devoted to the curriculum was a blessing that few acknowledged. Sakura didn’t know how anyone could celebrate with their futures literally on the line.

         It made her sick that she was basically teaching herself the rest of her subjects. Consensus said she was a genius, but the truth was that she studied her ass off. According to her everyday schedule, when high school ended, real school started. It was exhausting and sapped her of a social life, but she knew it would pay off.

         In her opinion, Mr. Uchiha provided the right amount of challenge for the right amount of payoff. He kept a medium-length book in progress on the side, always an interesting and thought-provoking read, and assigned periodic quizzes and discussions to make sure they weren’t slacking. They practiced literary analysis and essay-writing, debated present versus past versus future tense, and reviewed terms. Sometimes, he even surprised them by allowing a half-hour leisure period to catch up on the work or ask questions, of which only she took advantage.

         That wasn’t to say he eased up on them even the tiniest bit. True to Sakura’s assessment, he carried a sadistic streak and relished creativity in his punishments. His decidedly cruel smile and hard stare screamed, “Fs for everyone!” as Naruto, a frequent recipient of said creative punishments, liked to dramatize.

         “Well, everyone except Sakura,” he had slyly amended, unknowingly sending her into a flustered introspection over any hidden meanings. “She’s his favorite.”

         She suffered an attraction that felt heavier with each day and did her best to remain aloof under its weight. The generous offer to help with Konoha University’s entrance exam was as much of an academic opportunity as it was a chance to see Mr. Uchiha after hours. It shouldn’t have felt so taboo, but it entered dangerous territory when a languid heat curled through her limbs and seized her heart and loins. Her shameful mind fantasized about finding him with but a loosened tie and an undone button.

         In time, “IV” became “XXVII” with no sign of stopping, but the classroom always sparkled like the midday sun.

* * *

Mr. Uchiha was peeling his orange when she knocked on his door after the final bell. With his permission, Sakura let herself in and approached his desk. A pleasant, albeit strong, citrus tang hung in the air as he dug his fingers into the orange flesh and ripped it apart.

         Sakura watched the process with a strange fascination for several seconds before shaking herself out of it and bowing. “Good afternoon, Mr. Uchiha.”

         “Ms. Haruno,” he greeted in return, barely looking up from his task. After hours, he remained disciplined, with a firm tie and no buttons undone on his suit. “I presume you’re here about the entrance exam?”

         “Yes, and I can’t wait to get started!” she enthused without thinking. Mortification soon followed and tripled when all he did was arch a fine eyebrow. Her plan to remain aloof had already crashed and burned, and the man in front of her was entirely to blame. She metaphorically beat her forehead in with her palm.

         “The exam takes two hours to complete, not including any of the other subjects. If you’re truly serious about it, I’ll coach you until four o’clock on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I estimate about three weeks to cover the material.”

         “Just me?” she all but squeaked. For thirty minutes three times a week, they would be alone. It wasn’t a significant allotment, but, to her, it sounded like an eternity to be scrutinized by a man who demanded perfection. Perfection she was _not._

         The Uchiha deadpan, like Sakura’s alarm, was legendary. “Do you see anyone else around?”

         She didn’t. Aside from the noise faintly breaching the cracked door, they were the only signs of life in the abysmal space. It was both a distressing and arousing reminder, one she really didn’t need. Her composure was shaky but intact.

         He didn’t require a response and went on to say, “You will not waste my time. When we start, you’ll see it to the end. Do I make myself clear?”

         “Yes, sir,” she breathed as her heart rate spiked. “I won’t waste your time, I promise.”

         Mr. Uchiha nodded and proceeded to eat a slice from his orange.

         Common sense dismissed her because it was Thursday, but her feet defied her a few moments longer so she could watch him lick a spot of juice from his thumb. With that tantalizing image in mind, she made to leave—but his voice froze her step.

         “It’s not often that I have a pupil who isn’t an abject failure.”

         Sakura turned back around and held her breath under his onyx gaze.

         “Sasuke could stand to take cues from you,” he finished, weakening her knees with a knowing little smile. “Good day, Ms. Haruno.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The author would like to point out that she's been eating a lot of oranges lately.


	3. Family Dynamics

> She wanted to impress him,  _please_  him. She wanted him to fondly remember her after graduation and not as a student who was “good enough.” How could she get him to see her as a graceful woman instead of a bumbling, awkward teenager?

The next morning, Friday, passed in a daze for Sakura, who knew her first session with Mr. Uchiha was scheduled that afternoon. Vaguely, she recognized that her hand lifted to claim questions and her mouth tag-teamed to answer them, but her mind was hopelessly crowded with the hushed sort of terror of a young woman who knew she was too clumsy to hold an intelligent conversation with an attractive man.

         English flew by hand-in-hand with Anatomy and Physiology. Lunch had her screeching to a halt to devour half of a turkey-and-wheat sandwich, then taking off again to leap from Macroeconomics to Civics. Needless to say, her nerves were frayed by the time the final bell sounded, signalling the end of the day.

 _After hours,_ she thought with a gulp. _Sounds like a horror-movie title._

         Dramatics aside, she finished her business at her locker and scurried to her English class. She waited for the traffic to clear as the last class and all-too-familiar janitorial implements streamed out of the classroom. As she stood outside of the door, the senior hallway experienced a wave of eager students making their way to the staircases at both ends of the hall, and she had to press back against the wall to avoid being trampled.

         When the last few stragglers disappeared, she straightened her uniform and entered room 4E-2. Mr. Uchiha was in the midst of erasing some notes from the whiteboard and amending the number under his name to a heart-stopping “XLIX.”

         Sometimes, she hated her peers. Shaking her head in annoyance, she announced herself, leaving the door cracked behind her.

         “Ms. Haruno.” Noticing her interest, he motioned to the intimidating Roman numeral. “A student in my last class decided it would be funny to change this while I was out, so I added ten to it.”

         “Aren’t you dreading all the essays you’ll have to grade over winter break?” she tried to reason.

         “You underestimate my ability to skim and overestimate how many students will take the time to write each essay. I’ll be done in two evenings, no more.” Capping his marker, he dropped it in the tray. “Bring your chair to my desk and sit.”

         Sakura tore her eyes away and adjusted the weight of her backpack. She picked up the chair she regularly sat in and carried it over as commanded. When she placed it down in front of his desk, he made a disapproving noise in his throat. Following his nonverbal motion, she brought it to his side instead and slid her backpack off to place under her chair. She squeezed her skirt as she sank down, and her lashes involuntarily fluttered. The proximity to him brought the intoxicating aroma of a deeply masculine cologne.

         Mr. Uchiha joined her in his own chair, and he leaned down to pluck something out of his briefcase. He presented a sheaf of papers for them to look at together. “This is the exam.”

         Her eyes widened as she took in the front page. They darted over the first couple questions, straightforward sentences dealing with tense agreement. “Wow… How do you have this?”

         “I wrote it.” Tilting his head to the side, he coolly regarded her. “As your friend so politely pointed out weeks ago, _yes,_ I was a professor at Konoha University—Head of English and Literature, in fact. I know they’re planning to reuse it next year.”

         Sakura blinked as he took the sheaf away from her before she could better study it, but it wasn’t those answers that she yearned to know. Why _was_ he a high-school teacher instead of a renowned university professor and department head? Unfortunately, it wasn’t her place to ask; if he wanted her to know, he would tell her, and, at that moment, he chose not to elaborate. He slid the exam back into his briefcase. That was the end of it—for now.

         Mr. Uchiha placed a single sheet in front of her and directed her to the column of book titles, some of which they had already read in class and were planning to read in the coming months. “Excerpts from each book are provided in the exam itself, but I encourage you to read them now and hone your literary-analysis skills. Pay attention to themes and symbols; people often struggle with the difference. Somehow.”

         She bobbed her head gratefully.

         “I won’t give you the answers, but I will give you similar questions as practice so you can have an idea of what to expect in each section. Literary analysis is last, but it’s the most time-consuming. That’s why I’ve provided this information now. I’ll have actual work for you next week.”

         “Thank you, Mr. Uchiha.”

         “Mm-hmm. No matter how much I assign you for this, you’ll still be expected to complete my coursework in a timely manner.”

         “I can handle it,” she insisted.

         “We’ll see.” His lips lifted in an almost-smile that did interesting things to her heart. “Any questions for me?”

         Sakura had plenty of questions but none that she could ask, so she shook her head. The twenty-minute session had passed much smoother than expected. She was pleased with her composure and inwardly congratulated herself as she returned her chair to its rightful place. When she retrieved her backpack from the floor, the classroom door slid fully open. She looked over and was mildly surprised to see Sasuke crowding the doorway.

         “Excuse the intrusion, Uncle,” he said with his customary bow. He acknowledged her with a brief flick of his eyes. “May I have company over tonight?”

         Mr. Uchiha quirked his brow and pondered the request. “How… unexpected. Who is it?”

         By way of an answer, he shifted slightly and let Naruto poke his blond head in.

        Neither was particularly happy to see the other, but, surprisingly, his uncle relented with minimal resistance. “…Very well. If you two can wait a few minutes, I will drive you.”

         Sakura rushed to open her mouth and ended up tripping over her words as she asked, oh-so eloquently, “Um, may I—er, room for one more?”

_Ugh. So much for my composure._

* * *

Naruto and Sasuke insisted on diving headlong into the back seat, leaving Sakura to settle in beside Mr. Uchiha, who slipped into the driver’s seat. Her antsy fingers picked at her skirt, repeatedly adjusting it. She knew he had noticed; he glanced at her when they pulled out of the school parking lot. To keep her hands under control, she folded them in her lap.

         Why couldn’t she calm down? Her heart was pounding, and she felt too tense to touch her back to the seat. She had always desired an invitation to the Uchiha household, but Sasuke never allowed his two closest friends to visit for reasons unknown. Now that it was happening—

         —the true source of her anxiety was resting his right arm on the center console and his hand on the gear stick, fingers inches away from her left knee, and she pretended not to notice. Sasuke had never made her feel so keenly self-aware, she realized, so out of place in her own body and lacking in her own mental prowess. It was paradoxical how disconnected she felt from that knee yet hypersensitive about it at the same time. Her skirt was a modest length, but her skin crawled as if chilly air were blowing on it.

         She wanted to impress him, _please_ him. She wanted him to fondly remember her after graduation and not as a student who was “good enough.” How could she get him to see her as a graceful woman instead of a bumbling, awkward teenager?

 _He’s probably married. You shouldn’t think such things,_ Sakura reprimanded herself. In her peripheral vision, she scoped out his left ring finger from its place on the steering wheel and tried in vain to keep her heart from lurching happily. Lack of ring did not equal lack of lady friend.

         But fantasies were harmless.

         The house they soon arrived at was a quaint residence tucked at the end of a long gravel driveway and hidden by a lush grove of orange trees—an explanation for Mr. Uchiha’s apparent affinity. In size, the house itself wasn’t as awe-inspiring as it was cozy, but the amount of sprawling emerald land it sat on made up for it. Circumscribing the grassy acreage was dense pine forest that provided a thick barrier from the distant highway and any curious neighbors. A pond sparkled under the sunlight some yards away, home to a paddling of chatty ducks.

         Itachi Uchiha looked up from one of two perpendicular couches in the dim living room when they spilled into the foyer to remove their shoes. Naruto and Sakura had encountered him in the past when he used to pick up Sasuke from school on a near-daily basis. Apart from a few prominent stress lines under his eyes, he appeared no different. A television sat dark and untouched in front of him, as he preferred reading quietly by lamplight.

         “Obito?” Mr. Uchiha immediately asked, forgoing any semblance of greeting.

         Itachi, a man of even fewer words than Sasuke, managed to sum up his elder brother’s condition and mollify his uncle in three aphoristic words: “Same as usual.”

         With a nod, the Uchiha patriarch turned a left corner and disappeared into the depths of his house. Pleasantries were exchanged with Itachi, mostly one-sided, but they took no offense to what they remembered as his reserved nature. With that out of the way, they were free to examine their surroundings. Sakura compared the furnishings to those of the classroom and acknowledged that Mr. Uchiha, in the comfort of his own private space, truly saw no purpose for extravagance. It was simply him, raw and basic.

         Naruto was more interested in the cluster of electronics cradled in a cherrywood cabinet against the wall. “Not too shabby! How many channels do you got?”

         Sasuke had flinched violently with the first word and spun around to hiss, “Why are you yelling? Keep your voice down, damn it.”

         “Why?” asked the ever-oblivious Naruto, not bothering to adjust his own volume. He reached for the television remote, but his hand was slapped away, wringing out a yelp. “C’mon, I’m bored! What do you do for fun around here?”

         “Mr. Uzumaki, close that screeching maw of yours _this instant,_ ” Mr. Uchiha ordered as he re-entered the room. It was the angriest Sakura had seen him. She wasn’t the target, but even she tensed up at the sight of those narrowed eyes and tight jaw. “Obito is trying to rest. As usual, your noise is enough to have the police called.”

         “Sorry…” he muttered, poised to sulk like an overgrown child. “Jeez. So, what, you guys have to tiptoe and whisper all day so Obito can get some beauty sleep?”

         Whatever scathing response was about to come from both Mr. Uchiha and Sasuke was bitten back when another voice decided to chime in instead.

         “More than ‘some,’ actually,” said the newcomer, undoubtedly the Obito in question. He steadied himself with a hand on the door frame, and the other concealed the right half of his face—though not entirely, for the beginnings of a terrible mutilation wormed out from beneath his palm. The Uchiha family was notoriously pale, but he managed to take it a step further, as pallid as a bone. A sweaty sheen glittered over the bruise-purple skin beneath his one visible eye and across the prominent collarbone exposed by the plunging neckline of a too-big shirt that had probably fit him at one point.

         He looked… Sakura couldn’t muster a word other than “ _sick_ ” because that was what came to mind when she looked at him. So sick, in fact, that his brothers refused to look directly at him, as if it pained them to do so.

         Mr. Uchiha, however, swept past her and went straight for his nephew. “What are you doing out of bed?”

         “I heard a new voice and wanted to investigate,” Obito replied lightheartedly. “Nobody told me a pretty girl would be here; I would’ve combed my hair first.”

         It took Sakura far too many seconds to react to the unexpected compliment. She ducked her head. His hair was too short to comb—like with the compliment, she realized too late that it was meant as a joke, one without malice or sadistic intent. Coming from a born-and-raised Uchiha, it was a notion without fathom.

         “You’ve investigated,” Mr. Uchiha retorted sternly. “Back to bed.”

         Obito shook his head. “I’m all right for now, Uncle. Really.”

         Sidestepping the eldest Uchiha, he shuffled over to the couches and lowered himself next to Naruto, who stuck out his hand and introduced himself. Obito returned the gesture with the hand that wasn’t splayed over his face.

         “And you are…?”

         Sakura snapped to attention and made eye contact with him. “Sakura Haruno. Pleased to meet you, Obito.”

         “Mm. Likewise.” With his face partially tilted away and doused in shadow, he gave her an alluring, half-lidded smile. “Sakura.”

         “Why’re you doin’ that with your hand?” demanded Naruto Uzumaki, the undisputed king of faux pas. How he could be so enchanting at times yet willfully ignorant at others surpassed human comprehension.

         Thankfully, Obito didn’t seem bothered. “I have acute degenerative elasticity on the right side of my body. Simply put, my skin doesn’t know how to be skin and starts to fall apart if I don’t take my medicine every day.”

         With an air of malaise, Sasuke and Itachi shifted their gazes to new spots in the room like they were taking in the minimalist decor for the very first time. Mr. Uchiha pursed his mouth and retreated to the kitchen without a word. Sakura and Naruto gawked at Obito in respective horror and fascination.

         “Okay, that’s really weird but _totally_ awesome at the same time!”

         Obito laughed, baring a toothy smile. He seemed unconcerned by his brothers’ silence, which was broken by a blase summon to help in the kitchen.

         “Can I see?” Naruto pleaded with wide eyes.

         With a touch of reluctance that belied his initial candor, Obito dropped his right hand. Sakura reflexively turned her eyes away to give him privacy, but morbid curiosity persuaded her to take a quick peek.

         She did. She stared—and couldn’t stop.

         “ _Wow._ Can I touch it?” Naruto leaned in to better inspect the revealed flesh.

         “Um… Sure, I guess?”

         In between her friend’s explorations, Sakura examined the crinkles and scarring of a sagging cheek that undulated like turbulent waters. Some of it was just as pale as the rest of him, but angry black-red, like freshly dried blood, pooled beneath his epidermis, especially around tension points like his eyebrow and jawline.

         “It’s disgusting, right?” Obito was watching her as she watched him. His next smile was a bitter, lamenting one that looked out of place on his boyish features. He wasn’t quite as apathetic about his appearance as he led them to believe—or maybe it was just because of her. Whatever it was, he molded his hand back to his face in a makeshift mask, turned it away, and focused on a faraway, perhaps nonexistent, point beyond her shoulder.

         “I don’t think that,” she told him truthfully. Secretly, skin condition aside, she thought he was just as handsome as his family members and would’ve said as much had she been bolder, if only to make him smile something real again. “Just that it looks painful. …Is it?”

         “Sometimes,” he admitted with a shrug, still fixated on something only he could see, “but it’s nothing compared to my migraines. I have permanent head trauma from a past seizure, so I’m stuck with them for the rest of my life.”

         Sakura drowned in her pity, helpless, unable to think of anything to say that wouldn’t ring hollow or cliched or insensitive, but Naruto—

         “Know what makes me feel better when my head’s not in a right way?” he asked rhetorically. “Video games. Got any?”

         Coming to with a gentle sway of his head, Obito grinned and wordlessly gestured toward the door he had come from.

         Sakura smiled, relieved. Maybe Naruto _did_ have something others didn’t.

* * *

 _Oh, what a pretty picture,_ Sakura thought, propping her chin on her fist. Self-control kept her from outright drooling, but the sentiment was there. _Ino would puke with envy if she knew where I am right now._

         Three dashing Uchiha men were engaged in dinner preparations and moved about the space with practiced ease, each completely in their element. She learned that dinner was, for the most part, a family effort and began to appreciate them in a new light. They didn’t speak the entire time; it was almost telepathic how they passed around utensils and ingredients. Mr. Uchiha, to her pleasure, had shed his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his collared shirt to his elbows, exposing strong forearms. His smoky-gray waistcoat clung to the musculature in his back.

         He half-turned to peruse the spice rack and caught her in her shameful ogling, and, in an emotionally imbalanced fit, Sakura managed to knock over both the salt _and_ pepper shakers, then punch the salt in her haste to right them again. She had to drop to her knees to find it under the counter where it had rolled away. Thankfully, it was capped, and salt clean-up was minimal. The true disaster lay in the identical stares shot her way.

 _I’m such a loser,_ Sakura bemoaned. “I’m really sorry about that.”

         “Not even going to ask,” Sasuke muttered while his uncle faintly smirked and returned to his sizzling pan. Itachi was captive in his own world and didn’t notice anything outside of the vegetables he dutifully chopped.

         With his portion of the work finished, Sasuke wiped down his station, washed his hands, and disappeared, presumably to find Naruto and his absent brother. Not five minutes later, he resurfaced with both of them in tow.

         “What?! Nuh-uh, Obito cheated—you saw it! He pushed me off the bed on the final lap!” Naruto’s voice had retained its natural volume in his fierce competitiveness and was just as clear two rooms away. Obito’s laughter—unrestrained, genial, and decidedly un-Uchiha in a very good way—answered. With one final glance at Mr. Uchiha, Sakura slunk her way out and through the dining room that opened on the living room.

         “Oh! You have a kitty,” she cooed in delight at the discovery of a stone-gray wisp of a cat dragging itself around the eldest brother’s legs and leaving its hair all over him in a proper show of feline possession. She went to kneel and pet it but recoiled slightly at the bone-thin frame hidden beneath its poof of fur. It shuddered under her hand and wobbled on unsteady paws, then proceeded to lick its chops for the next fifteen seconds like it had just finished feasting.

         “That’s Bu,” Obito told her. The glee on his face and dread on Sasuke’s was very telling and brought an instant grin to her face. “Quirky little guy. He’s actually as old as you guys; we named him after Sasuke’s first word.”

         Naruto succumbed to a fit of laughter shrill enough to startle the geriatric Bu into hiding, and Sakura smothered her giggles with one hand.

         “Whatever,” their friend rebuked intelligently. His blush, while minuscule, damned him.

         The tender moment was interrupted by Itachi setting the dinner table and Mr. Uchiha following behind with various steaming, fragrant dishes. The Uchiha patriarch raised an eyebrow at them but refrained from commenting on their level of noise.

         Taking that as a cue, Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke migrated to the table and found their respective places.

 _‘Hey, Pig, guess who’s having dinner with Sasuke’s pretty family today,’_ she swiped into her phone. Before Ino could reply, probably demanding forensic evidence and notarized testimony, she discreetly took a picture of Naruto and Sasuke, seated across from her, in mid-bicker and attached it for her thorough inspection.

         Ino remained silent for some time before shooting back, _‘You know, Sasuke looks… almost happy. Not because of you, of course. Don’t get your hopes up, Forehead.’_

         Bemused, Sakura looked up at her friends and soon came to the same conclusion when she caught Sasuke giving Naruto a sidelong glance when he was preoccupied. He wasn’t scowling or glaring or rolling his eyes; he was just looking, and the simplicity of it, coming from him, held a much deeper meaning. It struck a pang in her heart.

 _‘Guess we’re both out of luck, huh?’_ Ino added glumly, as if reading her thoughts from miles away. _‘Beat out by freaking Naruto… How is my pride supposed to recover from that?’_

         “Okay, make sure you eat it all, Sasuke, even the carrots _—especially_ the carrots,” Naruto whispered too loudly to be a whisper as Mr. Uchiha took his place at the head of the table, soon followed by Itachi and Obito, who gulped down six different medications in a row with an impressively neutral expression. “Wouldn’t want to get detention and be stuck with me for three months, yeah?”

         To Sakura’s stupefaction, Sasuke almost smiled—almost. He quickly looked down when his uncle’s eyes landed on him.


	4. Treacherous Waters

> _“You’re a terrible liar,”_ Mr. Uchiha rebuffed. He placed his hand on her armrest and leaned in closer. _“Careful. I might think you’ve grown fond of me.”_

The uneasy truce that allowed Naruto to pass the threshold of the Uchiha household went up in flames and became a smoldering pile by Monday morning.

         “It’s a simile, not a smile, and I’ll ask that you keep your insipid flirtations to yourself. No, you can’t seduce me for a better mark,” Mr. Uchiha said, clipped in both tone and mercy. Every head in the room swung up to gawk at the spectacle. “F for the day. Hall. Do try to find your brain and propriety while you’re out there.”

         “I wasn’t—I didn’t— _no!_ ” Naruto yelped in angry, voice-cracking humiliation. He turned bright crimson. “Mr. Uchiha, _why?_ It was a serious question, I swear!”

         Sakura suppressed a snort of laughter at her friend’s expense and quickly sobered when his pleading gaze landed on her.

         “Help me,” he silently mouthed just before grabbing his belongings and trudging out of the classroom with drooping dejection. She watched him go with a crease in her brow.

         Sakura truly didn’t know how to help him out of the hole he had dug. On day one, Naruto made a name for himself as the resident troublemaker, and now, three weeks later, his attempts to show serious commitment to his education were misconstrued as nothing more than his latest prank. She suspected that he wanted her to reason with their teacher, to repair the destruction, but she kept her head down.

         She was picking her battles just as Mr. Uchiha advised. This wasn’t hers to fight.

         Cleaning always came at the conclusion of the lesson, no matter how long it ran, as the lectures were more important. If they only had a couple minutes to dust the shelves before the bell, so be it. Choji, the designated janitorial lead, no longer required prompt to wheel the cart in and delegate chores. The class, including Naruto, sullen and resentful, spread across the room to sanitize the tabletops and chairs and sweep the floor. If she had one nice thing to say about her classmates, it was that they weren’t often responsible for adding to the number on the board.

         Sakura was given the leftmost window, and she rolled the blinds up to expose the glass, warm to the touch by the spot of sun glimmering over the horizon. She lifted the pane to dust out the frame and relished the fresh breeze.

         “Mr. Uzumaki, why am I finding a rat’s nest of wrappers under your table?”

         “How should I know? I didn’t put ‘em there. I don’t even _like_ Chocomint Wafers. You know that weird kind of aftertaste that makes you feel all guilty and sick inside? Yeah, not good.”

         “Interesting. You know what they are without even looking at them.”

         “Oh. Hmmm… I need to speak to my lawyer…”

         Mr. Uchiha always helped with the cleaning. Whether it was because he didn’t trust them to do a thorough job or something else entirely, she respected him for it; she had three other teachers who would’ve been perfectly content to sit and watch—maybe not even watch. Maybe not even be in the room for it. It seemed like he never demanded more of them than what he was willing to do, himself.

         It became an epiphany: Contrary to the sheer number of Fs he handed out, he didn’t _want_ them to fail. When he found something worth nurturing, he was more inclined to reward than punish. If Naruto and the others could come to the same conclusion, they wouldn’t feel so personally attacked by what was a challenge to improve the quality of their work. They were lucky to have someone rooting for them, albeit in a severely backhanded manner.

         Stubborn Naruto would never see it that way.

         A teasingly familiar cologne permeated the air, snapping her to attention, and she eagerly turned her head to greet it—and found her nose pressed into a solid chest clad in wool. Giving a voiceless gasp, she jerked away before she could think about getting comfortable. Mr. Uchiha had leaned over her to polish the glass that she couldn’t reach and didn’t acknowledge her violent reaction. He soon moved on to the next window, leaving her to stare after him with pained longing.

         How was a girl supposed to properly function after that? She resumed her task, though more absorbed in an unbidden daydream about her head on his chest and his arms wrapped around her, and _that_ was when he chose to address her.

         “Put some effort into it, Ms. Haruno,” he reprimanded from two windows away, startling her out of her skin. “You’re supposed to get rid of the dust, not draw in it.”

         “Yes, sir!” With determination anew, she proceeded to whack the crap out of that window frame and accidentally sent the nearby Hinata into a coughing fit.

* * *

“The wall has more of an ass print than my actual assigned seat,” Naruto lamented at lunch. “I don’t know what to do, guys. I try to learn more by asking questions, but I just manage to piss him off. But, when I don’t try to learn, he calls on me and asks a really hard question that I don’t even know the answer to, and that pisses him off, too! I’m screwed—no, _fucked._ ”

         The rest of the cafeteria no longer looked over at their table, having become desensitized to the daily rants. Even some of their classmates couldn’t muster the most halfhearted of chuckles at his expense anymore; by this point, the issues between Mr. Uchiha and Naruto were more painful than amusing, serious in a very distracting and problematic way. Why did he have to rebel against every order? Why couldn’t he just do the work like the rest of them? Sakura had listened to their whispers more than once.

         Sasuke proved to be, perhaps, the only person who hadn’t given up on Naruto. He peered at him over sagely steepled fingers. “Ask him for some tutoring on Saturday. Madara almost never leaves on the weekends.”

 _That can’t possibly leave him with much time to date,_ Sakura noted. Having finished off her carrot sticks, she was free to fill out a worksheet for Anatomy and Physiology with her open textbook. Homework for her other classes was laughably simple: find the answer and copy it word-for-word. She was able to divide her attention in a way she never could while doing work for English and followed the trajectory of the conversation with much greater interest.

         “Go to his _house?_ Er, I mean, your house? That’s… ehh…”

         “Don’t make it weird,” Sasuke snapped. “It’s not like you’ll be there alone with him. Obito’s always there… and so am I.”

         Naruto perked up considerably at that.

         “What about Itachi?” Sakura asked out of pure curiosity.

         “Itachi doesn’t actually live with us anymore. He just watches over Obito when we’re gone and has dinner with us a few times a week.”

         “I like Obito,” Naruto interjected, slurping up a tangle of noodles and, in his fervor, speckling Sakura’s worksheet with droplets of broth. She hummed in agreement. “When he’s not a dirty cheater, I mean. Dunno why you hid him from us for so long.”

         “I didn’t _hide_ him, idiot. In case you didn’t notice, he’s in pretty bad shape. Even his doctors have to come to him.”

         “Well, you could’ve invited us over sooner. How many years have I been starin’ at your ugly face now?”

         “Hn. I knew you were going to piss off Madara somehow; I wasn’t exactly looking forward to that shit storm.”

         Naruto opened his mouth to retort but, after a pause, closed it and shrugged instead. He was the type of person who would argue from sunrise to sunset without even knowing what he was arguing about, but he couldn’t begin to dispute it. Mr. Uchiha was, miraculously, the only person on the face of the planet who was immune to his charms. “Fair enough.”

         “So, why doesn’t Itachi live there?” Sakura pressed.

         “Because he’s renting on Konoha University campus to get to his classes faster. He’s even more of a nerd than you are.”

         She was too placated by Sasuke’s strangely talkative mood to find malice in his sneer but recoiled in mock-offense anyway when he reached over to flick her vulnerable forehead. The discovery of a possible… _something…_ between her two friends somewhat dampened the attraction, but she still caught herself admiring his sharp jawline from time to time. “Hey!”

         “Anyway… what about you, Sakura? Wanna be tutored?” Naruto again turned his pleading gaze on her. “You know Mr. Uchiha likes you. Maybe he won’t be a huge prickosaurus if you’re there.”

 _What? I don’t need to be tutored,_ she made to say—but snapped her lips shut just in time. An opportunity to visit the Uchiha family was not one to be squandered, so she nodded, trying not to seem too eager but failing miserably in the process. “All right. Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

         “Cool, it’s a date!”

         Just who the date was with was made painfully clear when Naruto’s eyes shifted almost imperceptibly in Sasuke’s direction.

         “I mean, he hasn’t actually agreed to it yet,” she dryly pointed out.

         Neither of them seemed to hear her.

* * *

Sakura had enough sense to smile at Ino in their shared Civics class. In a treaty of women-in-heartbreak, they had taken to texting more often, mostly to speculate about how long Sasuke’s feelings for Naruto had gone unrequited. It was refreshing having a female perspective to confer with on topics that her two male friends could never take seriously, and, if she were being honest with herself, she was grateful for a reason to put her pencil down once in a while.

         She hadn’t looked forward to Ino’s company to such a degree since they were children, but now, _at last,_ after years and years of rivalry, they were able to begin mending the Uchiha-shaped cracks in their relationship.

 _‘Maybe we’re reading too much into it,’_ Sakura had pressed into her phone before bed on Sunday night with a bitter sort of ache. Her emotions over the weekend took a tumultuous plunge for the worst. _‘It was just a look.’_

 _‘This is Sasuke we’re talking about,’_ Ino pointed out, unwilling to give her the validation she was clearly looking for. _‘That’s precisely it—it was a look. Not the glare or frown we know and love.’_

         It was eerie how well the blonde girl knew her thoughts. Their friendship had only just begun to swell, but their heads already aligned at the temple.

         Their conversation had eventually turned to other male prospects. She chose not to mention her feelings for Mr. Uchiha; she didn’t even know how to begin to wrangle that hot mess into cohesion, and it wasn’t something she wanted to get out in case it somehow made its way back to the source. Ino, as sweet as she pretended to be, was an insufferable gossip, and Sakura didn’t trust her well enough with the sensitive details.

         Mr. Uchiha was engaged in a phone call when she arrived at his classroom an hour and a half later. She made to give him privacy, but he halted her in mid-step when he gestured for her to retrieve her chair and join him at his desk.

         “I don’t care what he looks like. Is he competent?” he muttered into his phone, scratching at the side of his face. “And I mean _competent,_ as in ‘not possessing a cereal-box doctorate.’ I won’t tolerate another disaster like the last one. I may have agreed to your trials, but it’s my nephew’s well-being in question.”

         Feeling terribly rude despite the permission, Sakura placed her chair a little farther away than usual so she wasn’t crowding him. She sat, clutched her backpack to her chest, and averted her eyes to various spots around the room that weren’t him. Eavesdropping was unavoidable; she couldn’t ignore that smooth baritone.

         “We’ll see about that.” He paused. “Tell him to expect my call by five o’clock.”

         Was Obito getting a new doctor? She was still pondering the implications of the conversation when he hung up.

         “Don’t pout.” Mr. Uchiha leaned over and snagged the leg of her chair. He yanked her closer, and her hand shot out to grasp the corner of his desk. She gaped at him. “I told you not to waste my time.”

         “I wasn’t!”

         So set the precedent for their thirty minutes together. Although his emotions never expressed themselves in his countenance, he was clearly annoyed by whomever he had just spoken with and corrected her grammar mistakes with unjustified impatience. In turn, that led to more mistakes, little ones borne of flustered indignity rather than ignorance, and she felt like she had accomplished nothing by the end of it all. Her head hurt, her hand hurt—her pride screamed its way through narrow-hipped childbirth. Thankfully, in reprieve, as the half-hour drew near, he seemed to realize the same and took in a breath to compose himself.

         “I apologize,” he told her.

         Warmed by his unexpected humility, she accepted the apology with a cautious smile and decided it was safe enough to broach the subject from lunch. “Naruto and I would like to be tutored on Saturday. Would that be possible?”

         “If you want to visit Sasuke, that’s fine. You don’t need to make excuses to try to impress me.”

         “N-no, we…” She cleared her throat of its pathetic tremor. “That’s not it.”

         “Your grades aren’t those of somebody who needs to be tutored. Mr. Uzumaki, yes, but you have no reason to spend your Saturday with me. Try again.”

         “My grades aren’t _that_ good…” Sakura winced as the statement raked over her delicate self-worth, but she held firm. “I could stand to increase my average.”

         It backfired, only serving to twist his lips into a disapproving frown that ripped at the seat of her soul. “Don’t put yourself down; I don’t like that. Try again.”

         “Well, I—I mean, I also want to help Naruto. Maybe… maybe he’ll be able to focus better if I’m there?” Sakura cringed as her weak excuse hung in the air for a few seconds. Everything she spouted was a miss, it seemed. Like he had said, there was no reason for her to be tutored, and she couldn’t think of anything convincing enough to change his mind.

         “You’re a terrible liar,” Mr. Uchiha rebuffed. He placed his hand on her armrest and leaned in closer. “Careful. I might think you’ve grown fond of me.”

 _Does he know?_ she wondered, struck with a cold, spine-gripping fear, unable to look at him. She dug her fingers into her thoroughly abused skirt, wringing and twisting in anxiety over how her schoolgirl crush would shatter his opinion of her and leave her floundering among the masses. _Please, no… I couldn’t bear it!_

         “You and Mr. Uzumaki may come to my home on Saturday. Bring all of your books and plenty of paper,” he relented, still tilted forward in his seat. When he reached for her _—for her,_ not just near her—their knees brushed, but infinitely more captivating was his hand, which gently pried her fingers out of her skirt one-by-one. He left her with the torturous observation that he could wholly engulf both of her wrists with such large hands—and pin them so hard that she could never hope to break free.

         “What comes next, Ms. Haruno?” A fringe of hair fell across his right eye when she dared to lift her chin and admire his long, lowered lashes, as dark as the insinuation weaving through his tone. He didn’t need to use his hands; he pinned her in place with his gaze alone. “ _Extra credit?_ ”

         A respectable distance suddenly yawned between them, ending both the intimate moment and their session at the bottom of a cold, desolate declivity. Sakura, shivering in the absence of his searing proximity and a potent sense of baffled arousal, had just enough presence of mind to remember to ask for his address, which he jotted down in her notebook, clear and bold, above her cramped handwriting.

         Swaying in place outside of Mr. Uchiha’s closed door, Sakura dazedly fished for her phone, opened her chat history with Ino, and hovered a finger over her onscreen keyboard. After much deliberation, she decided to hint, against better judgment because she had to get her thoughts out before she imploded with frustration, _‘There’s this guy…’_

         A sleepy-eyed Mr. Hatake emerged from his classroom across the hall, appearing very much like he just awoke from a long nap with how his silvery hair flopped in his face. He didn’t seem to notice her. With a slouch, he shoved his hands into his pockets and shuffled away.


	5. Halcyon Days

> _‘He’s… complex,’_ Sakura said at the behest of Ino, who refused to change the subject until she gave her something to work with. _‘You never know what he’s thinking unless he tells you, and, even then, you’re not sure that’s the whole truth. And he has this intense stare. He’s probably thinking about twenty different things at once but still able to focus on what’s right in front of him.’_

“Sakura! _Psst!_ ”

         She tore her eyes away from her textbook as Naruto slipped into the chair next to her. “What?”

         He gestured at the whiteboard, where a new addition had made its way next to “Madara Uchiha” and “LV.” It was a straightforward question dealing with sentence structure, and its presence indicated that their teacher expected them to be able to answer it by the time class began. “Can you let me have it? Please? I need to show Mr. Uchiha that I’m serious now.”

         “But you’re not,” she quipped dryly. “You’re asking me for the answer.”

         “That doesn’t—! Ughh.” Naruto scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Please, Sakura? I promise I’m gonna do better. I’m _really_ trying. But I can’t do that if Mr. Uchiha thinks I think it’s all a joke.”

         “All right… Just for today,” she acquiesced, feeling her heart clench for him. The little moment of glory for answering a question correctly was nothing compared to what it would mean for her friend, who was desperate to prove himself before it was too late. “The answer is ‘D.’ The other sentences don’t follow the same noun-and-passive-verb structure as the example. ‘A’ starts with a gerund, ‘B’ with an infinitive, and ‘C’ with a prepositional phrase. Got all of that?”

         “Yeah, yeah, thanks, Sakura! You’re the best!”

         “But don’t tell him I gave you the answer if it backfires… I don’t want to get into trouble for it.”

         “You got it.” Naruto gave her double thumbs-up and a wink for good measure. She relaxed her worried brow and readied herself for the train wreck.

         The bell rung, and Mr. Uchiha entered the classroom with a cardboard box full of books. They had just finished up _Feudal Borne_ yesterday and were due to start the next on his seemingly endless list; there was minimal downtime between each historical novel. He set the box down on his desk and called them up by name to exchange their old ones for the new ones.

         Sakura began thumbing through _Valley of Waste_ while she waited for everyone to settle back down. Oh—was that…? She flipped back a page and stared at what she realized was a romance scene. The more words that registered, the more she wondered if the title was appropriate for school. Pressing a knuckle to her lips and chewing on it, she found the beginning of the tense encounter between a young lord and his childhood friend, an unwilling concubine who finally found herself in her home village ten years later, and started absorbing the lascivious words with a delicate blush and wide-eyed rapture.

         “Since this novel has a couple adult scenes, particularly those from pages thirty-three to thirty-seven and pages ninety-one to ninety-nine, I will allow you to skip them if such content is either discomforting or forbidden to you by your parents.”

         Pages rustled as every single person searched for the aforementioned scenes.

         While the students giggled among themselves, Mr. Uchiha, unperturbed, gestured to the question on the board. “Who wants to submit themselves for judgment?”

         “Me! I know it!” Naruto cried, thrusting his hand into the air. “D!”

         He stared, unimpressed. “And…?”

         “Nope, there’s no ‘and.’ It’s just ‘D.’”

         “ _How_ did you come up with that answer?”

         “Oh. Well, ‘A’ starts with a gerbil, ‘B’ has something to do with infinity, and ‘C’ is a ‘purpositional’ phrase.” His voice dropped with each word he couldn’t remember, trying to make them too ambiguous to properly decipher from a distance away, like he thought their teacher was hard of hearing. “Basically, they aren’t like the example sentence.”

         Naruto looked so proud of himself that it hurt. Sakura groaned, embarrassed for him.

         Mr. Uchiha seemed to feel similarly. He briefly closed his eyes with a grimace. “You don’t actually know the words you just tried to regurgitate at me, do you?”

         “Um… I didn’t not _not_ know them… not?”

         “Should I just give you your Fs all at once instead of going through this every single day? I’m tiring of your nonsense. You waste at least ten minutes of class every time you open your mouth.”

         “I don’t want Fs,” he argued, as-a-matter-of-fact. “I want an A.”

         “Hn. I bet. And how do you expect to receive this A?”

         “Gimme a question that you think I can answer. If I get it right, I get an A today. No, wait, I get an A for today _and_ tomorrow.”

         Despite herself, Sakura raised an amused eyebrow. There was no way Mr. Uchiha would actually agree to—

         “I accept your terms,” he declared, proving her wrong in one fell swoop. “Now, here are mine: If you give me an incorrect answer, you drop out of my class today and retake English—regular, not Honors—with a different teacher next semester.”

         The class fell into a deathly stillness that not even steamy romance could quell. When Naruto gave his answer, it reverberated so loudly that Sakura’s ears rang—or maybe that was because of her own panicked thoughts.

         “…Deal.”

         “Naruto, _no!_ ” Sakura whispered.

         “Don’t worry… I’ve got this.” He forced a grin, but it rang clear in his crinkled brow that he was worried. Her anxiety tripled.

         “Your persistence would be admirable if it didn’t constantly lead to your downfall,” Mr. Uchiha said. The gibe had Naruto squeezing his hands into determined fists and gnawing on the inside of his cheek like it was a wad of chewing gum. Everyone watched unblinkingly as four different words were written into a neat column on the board.

         “Which is the correct spelling of the English word ‘dereliction’?” Mr. Uchiha moved to fully reveal the choices and offered a mean smile. “Take your time. What’s a few more minutes compared to what you’ve already taken away from your peers?”

         “Um…” Naruto’s eyes darted between them and back again. He repeated the process twice more. “Hmm… ‘Dereliction,’ you said? That’s, ah…”

         Sakura knew he didn’t know the answer. Everyone in the _room_ knew he didn’t know the answer. She was terrified that he would get it wrong by inevitably choosing at random instead of backing down and pleading for mercy. With that in mind, she found herself physically incapable of keeping her head down. In the faintest of whispers, barely moving her lips, she did the unthinkable by telling him, “B.”

         Under the table, unseen by their teacher, Naruto squeezed her knee in gratitude. He pretended to think about his answer for several beats longer before answering in an impressively unsure voice, “Is it ‘B’?”

         Mr. Uchiha tilted his head slightly and gazed back at him. Finally, he hummed and banished the writing with two swipes of his eraser. “You win this time, Mr. Uzumaki. I will give you an A for today and tomorrow—provided, of course, you attend class.”

         “All right!” Naruto whooped, pumping his fist in triumph. His victory against their tyrannical teacher was infectious; he received hearty congratulations from their classmates. They all enjoyed a simultaneous release of tension.

         “But first—” Mr. Uchiha called for abrupt silence with his hand. “First… spell your answer for me. You knew it was ‘B,’ so you shouldn’t have an issue.”

         The blond boy froze, along with his exultant grin. “Oh… y-yeah, of course. Um, D-E-R…”

         “E-L,” Sakura whispered, careful not draw attention to herself or make a sound that could carry across the room and give them away. She was actually sweating, trembling with fear, because she knew the consequences would be disastrous. Naruto began tapping his fingers in a contemplative rhythm on the tabletop to better disguise their rule-breaking. “I-C-T…”

 _What am I doing, what am I doing, what am I doing?_ her mind shrilly berated itself. Through the cacophony, she almost couldn’t focus on keeping the letters in order. _What if I get caught?!_

         But she couldn’t stop; she had to protect her friend.

         “…I-O-N,” Naruto finished with a flourish. He chuckled uneasily as Mr. Uchiha crossed his arms.

         “Correct.”

         Again, the class exploded into noise. Naruto soaked it in, grinning as wide as his cheeks would allow, looking like the happiest kid in the world. Sakura couldn’t help but smile with him as her heart rate skipped, skipped, skipped… then slowly regulated itself. _They did it._ She couldn’t wait to tell Sasuke at lunch. Everything was going to be—

         “Ms. Haruno,” Mr. Uchiha said, puncturing the noise with ease. “F for the day and detention after school. Gather your things and go out to the hall.”

         Her heart stopped.

* * *

“You know why. If you’re going to cheat, I suggest you learn not to be so obvious about it. That was not your assigned seat, Mr. Uzumaki, and _that_ was your first mistake. You had me on my guard from the very beginning.”

         “But… but… _No,_ punish me instead!” Naruto begged. Even after class, Sakura was still too stunned to open her mouth and defend herself. She could only listen and struggle to keep the contents of her stomach down. Second-block students were trickling in and watching their spectacle with mild interest, but she couldn’t even feel their eyes on her numb back. “It was my idea! Sakura didn’t even want to!”

         “Then she shouldn’t have done it.”

         “Please, Mr. Uchiha, Sakura is a good student; she _never_ does stuff like this. She’s, like, the most responsible person I know.”

         “I’m aware. That’s exactly why this is so serious. I won’t have her enabling your terrible habits. Likewise, I won’t tolerate your dragging her down with you. Let this be a hard lesson for you both so we can move on.”

         “But… she was just being a good friend,” he whispered in helpless anger. “You were gonna kick me out, and—”

         “—I wasn’t _actually_ going to remove you from my roster, Mr. Uzumaki.” Mr. Uchiha sighed, long and suffering, and rolled his eyes skyward. “I would need clearance from the principal and the school board for that. It was a bluff, nothing more.”

         “…Oh. Huh.”

         “Now, off you go. You’re both about to be late for your next classes, and I need to start my own.”

         Vaguely, Sakura recognized that her feet took her to Anatomy and Physiology and that Naruto resembled a kicked puppy up until they parted ways. She didn’t say a word as the story was regaled during lunch to Sasuke, whose eyebrows were marooned in his hairline all the way through. She didn’t answer any questions in Macroeconomics, where most of her classmates tended to catch up on their sleep and leave her with the task of keeping the lesson moving. In Civics, she didn’t return Ino’s smile or her discreet text messages about the “mystery man.”

         She felt… betrayed. It was foolish because she knew she didn’t deserve special treatment, but the irrational pang stubbornly persisted. She obsessed over her first F up until she found herself knocking, with hollow resignation, on Mr. Uchiha’s classroom door at the end of the day. He called her in, and she shuffled to her chair. There was no need to bring it to his desk for detention, so she seated herself and stared forlornly at her folded hands in her lap. Mr. Uchiha finished his tasks in the space of five minutes, spent in all-consuming, tense silence.

         “I will rescind the F,” he finally began, drawing her attention, “if you spend your detention writing me a concise essay about why you thought giving Mr. Uzumaki the answers was a tactical move. You have until four o’clock.”

         Sakura stared for only two seconds before she was yanking her notebook out of her backpack and scribbling away.

         For the first twenty minutes, she poured every ounce of her heart and soul into a six-paragraph essay about befriending a misunderstood, nihilistic orphan named Naruto Uzumaki, using her knowledge of persuasion to appeal to the human sympathy. Re-reading it brought an unshed tear to her eye as she recalled those forgotten halcyon days.

         Mr. Uchiha looked up as she noisily ripped two pieces of paper out of her notebook and wadded them up. He didn’t deign to comment on her emotional sniffle and went back to his book.

         Three minutes later, just before four o’clock, she finished her second draft, one intoning that cheating was, in fact, _not_ a tactical move and only served to hurt her best friend’s future in the long run. She realized her mistake and wouldn’t do it again.

         He read it, made a nondescript sound in his throat that effectively revealed nothing about his opinion, and penned an A in his gradebook for her.

         It was a bittersweet victory.

* * *

That evening, she couldn’t even remember why she had been so upset over the whole affair, like it was some kind of fleeting, masochistic daydream from the darkest corners of her brain’s default network.

         In a group text to Naruto and Sasuke, she updated them on how her detention went, and Naruto spammed happy faces and exclamation points at her before going into a ramble, one that had obviously been held back for her sake, about how sneaky Mr. Uchiha was and that he could really do some damage with his head games—“a mind fuck into oblivion,” as he called it. Sasuke remained silent, but she knew he was following the conversation with some measure of interest.

         When there was a lull, she swapped over to her second most-frequented chat.

 _‘He’s… complex,’_ Sakura said at the behest of Ino, who refused to change the subject until she gave her something to work with. _‘You never know what he’s thinking unless he tells you, and, even then, you’re not sure that’s the whole truth. And he has this intense stare. He’s probably thinking about twenty different things at once but still able to focus on what’s right in front of him.’_

 _‘Wow, that’s deep for a teenage boy,’_ Ino thoughtfully sent back. _‘You sure he wasn’t held back a few times?’_

         Sakura had neither confirmed the age of her romantic interest nor corrected her blonde friend when she assumed it was someone in their grade. It suited her purposes that Ino had no reason to lift her eyes higher than the head of a gangling teenager. That way, she was free to gush and feel confident that the dots couldn’t be connected with any one person.

 _‘What kind of a teenager has twenty different things on his mind?’_ Ino added when she failed to respond. _‘In my experience, there’s usually only two or three things—and never at the same time.’_

         She smiled at the joke. What sort of things occupied Mr. Uchiha’s thoughts? Obito was always on the forefront of his mind; she was confident of that. There was an undeniable parental instinct that transcended the traditional family-tree structure and controlled the most minute intricacies of his day. Phone calls to doctors in the afternoons and evenings, strict times to return home so that Obito was never by himself, and a watchful eye over people’s interactions with him—mind and body, he was committed to the eldest Uchiha brother’s comfort and safety.

         Did the same apply to the younger brothers? He proved to care enough about Sasuke to offer transportation convenience and allow his friends, even one whom he clearly abhorred, to eat dinner with the family and be around the fragile Obito. Sakura knew there was some kind of underlayer of complexity in their family dynamic but couldn’t begin to surmise the gritty details. Every male Uchiha was frustratingly taciturn.

_Except Obito…_

         Perhaps she needed to speak to him and try to nudge out a few more details on Saturday. He hadn’t shied away from the most brusque of questions, giving off a painfully candid “that’s-the-way-it-is” attitude about his condition and what it was possibly inflicting on his family. If anyone could provide the insight she sought, it was him—and only him.

         With her mind somewhere in the vicinity of the Uchiha household, she replied to Ino unthinkingly, _‘That’s true. Maybe he’s not a teenager.’_

         The message sent, zipped between the webbing of her fingers, and she couldn’t snatch it back or delete it. She stared at the timestamp with creeping terror as the unintended implication scribbled itself in deep, tenebrous black all over her innocent words.

         Ino’s squeal was palpable.


	6. Deep Breaths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place in Madara's perspective, as requested by my FF.net reader **lyndyloowho**.

> _“Then why are you treating me like one of your oblivious peers?”_ Madara lifted his chin and stared her down. _“I’ll be blunt, Ms. Haruno: What do you want from me?”_

_Tutoring and new doctor on Saturday. Electricity due on Sunday. Phone bill on Monday. Itachi’s rent is also Monday. Time to assign the first class project._

         Madara Uchiha dug his fingers into the granite countertop, leaning over the kitchen sink, as he mulled over the next few weeks. His calendar, littered with slanted writing, hung on the wall in front of him. He briefly glanced over his shoulder at the pantry door, which was still slightly cracked, and prickled with irritation at the sight.

_The trash needs to go out—why hasn’t Sasuke taken care of that yet? Faculty meeting on Tuesday during lunch… Fantastic. Another inane encounter with Hatake._

         Obito entered the kitchen and yawned hard enough to pop his jaw. Scratching at his right hip, a constant source of discomfort for him, he opened the pantry door and wrinkled his nose. Once he retrieved his usual cereal box, he quickly shut the door and found a bowl in the cabinet. “Morning, Uncle. What are we having for dinner tonight?”

         “Good morning. I haven’t decided yet.” It was a lie. Like polished tungsten clockwork, he insisted on having the entire week’s meals planned every Monday when he made a trip to the grocery store. There were few reasons that he would deviate. “Do you have anything in mind?”

         “It’s been awhile since you made those noodles… Remember those cold ones with grilled shrimp and vegetables in soy sauce?”

         “Yes, I remember. That can be arranged.” He would have to break his routine and make a stop for some of the ingredients on the way home, but Obito didn’t need to know that. With one final glance at his calendar, he pushed away from the sink, narrowly missed treading on Bu’s tail, and sidestepped his eldest nephew as he filled his bowl.

         “Almost out,” Obito lamented aloud, giving the cereal box a little shake.

         Madara added “cereal” to his mental grocery list as he stepped out of the kitchen. Sternly, he called out, “Sasuke, I thought I told you to take out the trash.”

         “I’m getting to it!”

         “ _Now._ ”

         After a few seconds—a few too many for his liking—Sasuke dragged himself out from the direction of his room and, with a scowl, passed under Madara’s sharp gaze and into the kitchen. Not for the first time, he was struck by a near-perfect vision of Izuna, and it only served to further sour his mood.

         “Morning, Sasuke,” came Obito’s greeting.

         He mumbled something incoherent in reply, rummaged around in the pantry, and passed by Madara once again to transport the trash bag to the can outside. A reprimand was waiting for him when he returned.

         “When I tell you to do something, I expect promptitude. I shouldn’t have to supervise to make sure you actually do it.”

         “Yes, sir.”

         “You fake obedience very well in front of your friends,” Madara pointed out with a wry twist of his lips. “At school, you’re as polite as can be, especially when you want something. Why is that—you don’t want them to know how much of a brat you really are? Or just Uzumaki?”

         Sasuke didn’t have an answer for that—or lacked the courage to say it. It was a tired performance from both of them, with Obito as the silent audience. How many more years would they have to go through these same motions? Dissatisfied, he dismissed the boy to his room so he could finish getting ready for school.

         While Obito was occupied with eating, Madara drifted through the living room and to the right side of the house, which consisted of an empty study opposite a bedroom with an attached bathroom. In the bathroom, he checked the medicine cabinet by giving it a little rattle. It didn’t budge, so he flicked off the overhead light and returned to the foyer to step into his shoes and tie them.

         Sasuke, dressed and ready for school, emerged in a matter of minutes, just as Obito finished eating, washing out his bowl, and finding a comfortable spot on the nearest couch. He slung his backpack over his shoulder and made a beeline for his shoes.

         “Do we have to do this every morning? Say goodbye to your brother,” Madara ordered. Sasuke grudgingly went to Obito’s side and embraced him around the shoulders with loose arms.

         “Later,” Sasuke mumbled when he pulled away in a scant three seconds.

         “Bye, little brother.” Obito’s cheerful smile went unseen; the recipient kept his eyes to the ground like a berated child. “Have a good day at school. Try to bring your friends around some more, all right? You seemed happier.”

         “…Sure.”

         Madara narrowed his eyes but said nothing as the boy brushed past him to put his shoes on. When he disappeared out the front door, he told Obito, “Itachi is running late but will be here within the hour. I’d wait with you, but I can’t trust Uzumaki to stand outside my classroom.”

         Obito’s smile, always an illusion for the sake of his brothers, had already faded away. He never bothered to cover his face without company present, and the flesh sagged more prominently without a smile to pull it taut. “No need. The medicine is all locked up, safe and sound until Itachi gets here. You checked it yourself, I assume. Nothing to worry about.”

         Madara made a noncommittal noise. Years after the fact, they both took care not to show emotion when it came to the subject of the medicine cabinet.

         “Don’t be so hard on Sasuke, Uncle,” he said before he could turn away. “I imagine I wouldn’t be so happy if our roles were reversed.”

         With that parting sentiment, they exchanged goodbyes, and Madara locked the door behind him. Despite the reassurance, doubt stilled his hand on the doorknob, and he hovered in place, staring at the wood grain inches from his nose. He strained his ears for telltale footfalls, a thump, a cry, a _scream,_ but the house lay deathly tranquil. Shaking himself out of it, he went to open the driver’s door to his car.

         In the back seat, Sasuke had his head turned away, undoubtedly fuming with passionate, teenaged loathing and wishing the snow had fallen at a different angle that fateful day. Madara struggled to resonate with him like he had with his elder brothers, to explain that the world spun like a warped vinyl and that trying to hammer all the dips flat would result in irreparable damage, an off-kilter tune that nobody else could hear. Everything made more sense _—no sense_ in a way that invoked apathy instead of fear—when the mind accepted the inevitability of life and death and prepared to leap the pitfalls in between.

 _In a perfect world…_ he mused sardonically. _Whose perfect world?_

         “I shouldn’t have to remind you to appreciate what you _still_ have.” Madara found the ignition with the car key but didn’t turn it just yet. His hard eyes sought his nephew’s form in the rear-view mirror and lingered until reluctant eye contact was made. “Someday, you won’t be able to hold your brother’s hand, and that’ll be the day you start giving a shit.”

* * *

Almost every morning, Madara arrived to unlock his classroom door well before Uzumaki was due to drag his delightful self in. He left it partially open in a wordless invitation and began unpacking his briefcase of the things he needed. Ever since he caught the blond boy in the process of changing marks in his gradebook, he had taken to keeping one eye trained on it. If he needed to leave the classroom, it, along with everything else in his briefcase, came with him.

         Sometimes, he received an unwelcome visitor who assumed the cracked door was for his benefit. Kakashi Hatake shoved it open and slouched against the frame with his customary, “Yo.” He tended to cover the lower half of his face with a scarf, a different pattern depending on the day of the week, even during warm weather.

         Hatake thought it made him look mysterious. Madara thought there was a better word for it.

         “Did you hear about Senju’s new pet project?”

 _Yes._ Madara’s mouth tightened. “No.”

         “He’s adding a creative workshop to the Literature department in celebration of the anniversary of an alumni’s accomplishment—something about an award-winning short story? Must’ve had one hell of a professor to manage that.” His eyes fell shut with a hidden smile. “Anyway, it’s a great day for writers. I was thinking about holding my classes out on the terrace to soak up some sun. You’re welcome to join us.”

         “We’ll see,” Madara said shortly, not wanting to give him any reason to continue speaking. As usual, his efforts were in vain; the other man proved to be immune to social cues and adept at maintaining a one-sided conversation.

         “You must care a lot about your students,” he continued. “Always willing to give them your time before and after school. I can’t remember the last time I saw such happy faces.”

 _Is that sarcasm?_ He appraised Hatake with a critical eye, but there was nothing to dissect in that overly cheery facade. Ever since he overheard a passing comment in the teachers’ lounge about how Hatake loved to “fuck with” people, he never dropped his guard around him. He had yet to pinpoint his motivations.

         “I’ve heard good things about Ms. Haruno. You’re lucky to have such a diligent worker.”

         “Perhaps,” he retorted stiffly.

         Hatake laughed. “Don’t be modest, Madara. She could very well be the next big thing at Konoha University. Who knows? Maybe she’ll be generous enough to credit you for her award-winning composition someday. Then you’ll be the reason Senju funds a new workshop.”

         Madara bit down on his inner cheek. He didn’t know whether to tense in anger at what he perceived as thinly veiled taunts—or ignore the ramblings of an addled, lethargic brain. There was no telling with Hatake, who turned each and every conversation into a chore to navigate.

         “Your nephew is also a delight to teach; I never have any problems with him. You must be proud,” he wheedled. “How’s Obito, by the way?”

         “Is there a point to this, Hatake?”

         “Just making conversation with my fellow high-school English teacher. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think there’s a lost hawk circling the grounds in need of guidance.” He raised a hand in farewell and spun away. “Later.”

         Sufficiently annoyed, he glowered at Hatake’s back as he departed and wasn’t at all surprised when he didn’t bother to return the door to its original position. He was still stewing over the encounter when Uzumaki strolled in.

         “Whoa! What’d I do?” the boy demanded, holding up his hands in surrender. “Okay, _fine,_ if it’s about the gumball, I want it on the record that Choji framed me.”

         Madara stabbed a finger into his own temple and sighed.

* * *

Each one of his students carried a collection of tics and quirks that, like their names and records, Madara studied and mulled over until he was confident that he could recall each pertinent tidbit when it presented itself. They thought him omnipotent; he was simply patient and thorough in his observations.

         Deciphering Naruto Uzumaki was the most facile of conquests, as he unknowingly broadcasted his deviance right before he enacted it. In particular, he had a tendency to turn his head and scratch the back of his head as an excuse to survey his surroundings for any onlookers. Then he chanced a peek at Madara, who knew to avert his eyes and feign disinterest to catch him in the ensuing act.

         The boy wasn’t entirely at fault for his misbehavior; he, like so many others in this school, had become accustomed to traversing a plateau. He had been entirely unprepared for the lip of Madara’s dais and slammed right into it. Even now, he was still reeling from the collision, knocked far outside of his comfort zone. It was all too reminiscent of a young Obito.

         Madara wasn't without sympathy; he just had precious little time to waste and left it to the student to request his hand, which Uzumaki’s pride kept him from doing. More than anything, he appreciated someone who applied every facet of their being to their own betterment, and, in his opinion, it was never too late to ask for help. He had once given full marks to a failing student for simply taking initiative. The grades earned along the way were moot; he was infinitely more interested in the endgame, the point when students either gave up or dared to pull themselves up to Madara’s level.

         He was amused either way.

         As for Sakura Haruno—

         The depth of her devotion, in all things, impressed him. In obedience, analytical thinking, motivation, and quality of work, she was a student worth his effort. She cared, so he cared. Beyond that, the girl was a veritable knot of insecurity, prone to jolting at the mere sound of her name on his lips.

         Madara wasn’t blind or oblivious—far from it. More than a handful of swooning schoolgirls had targeted him in the past. He recognized the signs of Haruno’s little crush when they manifested in the first week of school and tracked them with a wary eye. Normally, his ruthless exterior was enough to dissuade any ill-advised feelings, but hers stubbornly persisted through humiliation, punishment, and sharp, repeated jabs at her friend.

         What did she expect to achieve by increasing the frequency of their interactions? What did she want from him? To him, there was nothing to gain. She didn’t seem interested in seducing him for grades or special privileges; she hadn’t once attempted to touch him or entice him with honeyed words. She didn’t even flip her short pink strands in his direction. He was equal parts intrigued and suspicious.

         Slowly, carefully, Madara had begun attempting to uncover the answer without breaching the unspoken boundaries of their teacher-student relationship.

         During their Wednesday after-school session, he decided to meet her at the classroom door and swept it shut behind them with a meaningful snap. The novelty of the gesture had her eyes, a jade-green too expressive for her own good, darting from the closed door to his imposing form, but she clung to composure.

         Haruno enjoyed inhaling his scent; he descried the damning way her nostrils flared when she passed him to retrieve her chair. It was an old bottle of cologne, one of a few bitter mementos forgotten by Izuna when he left the country.

         When they began the lesson, a short mock-exam, he stood from his chair and disappeared into her blind spot, forcing her to narrow her focus on his voice, which he lowered to a silky rumble as he commanded her to begin. Folding his hands behind himself, he paced to pass the time while she quietly worked, and he noted the attentive line of her back and her delicate profile as she tried in vain to follow his silent movements. She had scooted to the edge of her chair in her unease and taken to releasing it on the pleats of her skirt with the hand that wasn’t tapping her pencil against her notebook. He had mentally filed it as one of her nervous tics.

         Madara didn’t touch her, but she reacted as strongly as if he had, with visible shuddering—intimidation, perhaps—when he molded his hands over the back of her chair and leaned forward to check her progress. A waist-length lock of his hair slipped over his shoulder and tickled her cheek. He hovered for several minutes as he scanned her previous work for errors.

         “Wrong.” He brought his hand up to tap a finger on question twenty-four. “We just discussed that. If it doesn’t sound correct when you replace the compound with its pronoun, adjust your verb.”

         “Yes, sir,” she squeaked, hurriedly correcting her answer. Once finished, she swiveled around and craned her head to look up at him expectantly.

         Madara flicked his gaze down to meet hers. “Correct.”

         Haruno all but sighed at the praise and moved on to the next question. He backed off and returned to his seat. The rest of their time ticked away without incident, and, when four o’clock arrived, he immediately withdrew, shifting his attention to more pressing matters.

         He gave no indication of anything amiss during class on Thursday and Friday mornings but studied her disposition when he could. Instead of her usual glances that she thought he didn’t notice, she refused to look at him even once, and he considered it to be his victory—he had scared the curious little schoolgirl away. As he suspected, she didn’t know what she wanted from him, a grown man over twice her age.

         On Friday afternoon, expecting her to flinch away from his not-quite advances and erect polite barriers, he was almost surprised when she returned, instead, with glossy pink lips and one less button secured at the top of her uniform blouse. He couldn’t allow it to go unaddressed.

         Madara grew merciless in his determination to call her bluff. He closed the door again, more forcibly than last time, making her jump. “What are you hoping to prove?”

         “What do you mean?” she asked as she went to move her chair. She froze when he snatched her wrist and held her in place.

         “That won’t be necessary; an unexpected meeting has tied up most of my time for today’s session.” With that, he dropped her limp appendage and crossed his arms. “I’m a man of almost forty. Did you realize that? _Look at me._ ”

         Haruno turned her wide eyes on him. “I mean, I didn’t know your age, exactly…”

         “But you know I’m not a teenager.”

         She nodded slowly.

         “Then why are you treating me like one of your oblivious peers?” Madara lifted his chin and stared her down. “I’ll be blunt, Ms. Haruno: What do you want from me?”

         “What do I—? I… I want to learn from you.”

         “And what, exactly, do you want to learn from me?”

         “English,” she murmured, appearing completely baffled and more than a little alarmed by the ferocity creeping into his voice. “Grammar, punctuation, syntax. Essay-writing. Literature.”

         “What else?” he demanded, seconds away from a fully fledged glare.

         “N-nothing…”

         “I don’t have time for your coy attitude.” Madara closed the distance between them to capture Haruno’s chin between two firm fingers and lift her face from where it had fallen to her chest. “What—do you—want _—from me?_ ”

         It had the opposite effect than what he intended; she was rendered speechless. He sighed impatiently and, after a few moments, released her chin. Reaching for her blouse, he buttoned it back up to her collarbone where it belonged—and that was when she wrapped her slender fingers about his wrists, unable to fully enclose them like he could hers but still enough to keep him from pulling away.

         “ _Mr. Uchiha,_ ” she whimpered in the softest, sweetest tone, and the muscles in her throat contracted with her hard swallow. He was drawn to the telling manner in which she squeezed her thighs together, and he could no longer ignore the truth.

         Haruno wanted him to fuck her.


	7. Private Moments

> _“You’re practically salivating,”_ Mr. Uchiha observed mercilessly. _“Always more fixated on my mouth than the words coming out of it.”_

On Friday afternoon, Ino finally cornered her right before she was due to meet with Mr. Uchiha. Sakura had dodged her questions for days and insisted that she hadn’t meant anything by her comment. It was a joke—apparently not a funny one.

         The blonde girl remained unconvinced but came to the conclusion that she couldn’t do anything to force a name out of her. She changed tactics, feigning disinterest, but Sakura saw right through it. Ino could be patient when it suited her needs, and it was crucial, now more than ever, that she monitor what she said around her nosy friend.

         Ino, inspired by the awakening of Sakura’s sexuality, dabbed lip gloss on her mouth and undid the top button of her uniform blouse. With a parting sentiment of, “You’re too guarded in the way you dress. Loosen up, Forehead. You’ll need a miracle to impress this guy,” she let her go. Thankfully, she didn’t wait around for the end of the coaching session—it would have been all too telling.

         With legs too shaky to do the job, Sakura clutched the edge of Mr. Uchiha’s desk for support. Her spine was bent, as was her neck, as she hung her head and panted like she had just finished swimming upstream with her arms tied at the small of her back. Above her thrumming pulse, her skin simmered with unfulfilled desire. She replayed the encounter in her mind, turning it over and over in overly critical analysis.

         “Behave yourself,” he had murmured in gentle reprimand, twisting out of her weak clutches with a flick of his wrists. “I expect to see you and Mr. Uzumaki for tutoring tomorrow. Don’t forget.”

         The classroom was dim; Mr. Uchiha had turned off the lights when he departed for his meeting—following a suggestion that she take a few minutes to compose herself. He promised to return to lock his door and expressed that he didn’t want to find her lingering. Punishment for disobedience wasn’t mentioned, probably because he knew she wasn’t bold enough to risk it. But, perhaps, punishment didn’t hold such a negative connotation as long as it garnered his attention.

_He knows._

         It was both liberating and damning. With the realization of her inappropriate feelings came a permanent shift to their relationship, a darkness settling in her abdomen and stirring her senses into a frenzy. Mr. Uchiha knew what his touch did to her. He knew how his voice distracted her into arousal, how his presence sapped her strength at the knees and threatened to send them crashing to the floor.

         Sakura didn’t expect him to take advantage of it, but the fact that it was _their_ secret made her yearn for future interactions, to see if his gaze lingered just a bit more on her than anyone else. Was he at all affected?

         Her innards churned with excitement and sickness over the thought of what he could do with such forbidden knowledge if he had the inclination.

         Inexperienced Sakura couldn’t begin to describe just how the thought of being with a man, not a boy, made her feel. When she imagined his large hands encompassing her hips, she didn’t think of his age in comparison to hers and especially not in numerical values. When she pictured kissing him, it was the taste of his lips, not the consequences, that she obsessed over. Part of the allure lay in how taboo, filthy, and _dark_ such thoughts were. With only her fantasies to spur her on, it didn’t ring dangerous or ill-advised. She liked him. She trusted him to take the lead and knew he wouldn’t purposefully hurt her.

         Still, she was a little nervous.

 _It doesn’t matter,_ she firmly told herself. _Nothing is going to happen between us. He didn’t seem interested—and why would he be? Don’t kid yourself._

         Having successfully dampened her frustration, she was able to compose herself enough to peek outside for bystanders. With no one in sight in the silent hallway, she fled.

* * *

That highly anticipated Saturday came.

         Sakura, a licensed driver, borrowed her mother’s car to pick up Naruto for their morning tutoring with Mr. Uchiha. GPS guided her to his house, and she did her best to keep her nerves in check on the drive. Her blond friend, who passionately detested waking up early in the morning, complained the entire way, but she couldn’t muster an ounce of comfort.

         They arrived at the end of the stretch of driveway and parked beside Mr. Uchiha’s car. Previous reluctance forgotten, Naruto raced up to the front door before she finished unbuckling her seat belt, and she hurried to join him on the stoop after retrieving her backpack from the back seat.

         Sasuke was the one to answer the door. He leaned against the frame and crossed his arms as if to ask, “What do you want?” even though the tutoring session was his idea. Sakura knew he enjoyed those little moments when he could be difficult and tease them, especially Naruto.

         “Good morning, Sasuke!” she chirped, undeterred by his answering grunt.

         “Yeah, yeah, move aside already,” Naruto grumbled rudely, adjusting the strap of his backpack over his shoulder. “Let’s get this over with.”

         “What are you in a hurry for?” Sasuke scoffed. “You’re early. Madara’s still in the shower.”

         “Aw, _what?_ See, Sakura, I told you we shouldn’t have left so early!”

         “Uh-huh,” she muttered intelligently, too distracted by the thought of Mr. Uchiha’s warm, dripping masculinity to formulate a proper defense. Thankfully, the boys weren’t interested; Sasuke shifted his weight slightly, and Naruto took the opening to brush past him and disappear into the depths of the house.

         Snapping out of it, Sakura followed Sasuke inside, closing the door behind her. While she removed her shoes, her two friends turned a corner, and she made to follow—until she spotted something more interesting in her peripheral vision.

         “Bu!” she squealed, forgetting herself. She immediately slapped a hand over her traitorous mouth, mortified, anticipating a reprimand before it came.

         “For a second, I thought baby Sasuke was crawling around again.” A fully awake Obito joined her in the living room and smirked in his half-concealed way at her expression of mute horror. He took a seat on the couch closest to her, and a mewling Bu climbed up next to him. “It’s okay. I won’t tell Madara.”

         “Sorry, I totally forgot…”

         “No worries. I’m awake, aren’t I?”

         “But I didn’t know that,” she pointed out with a grimace. “I need to be more mindful in the future.”

         “Implying you’ll be our regular guest?” Obito teased. Perhaps it was her imagination, but he didn’t seem too opposed to the idea. Then again, he since presented so companionable a demeanor that it was difficult to decipher what he was truly feeling. It was, in a way, a little unnerving.

         “Oh. I mean… if I’m invited.”

         “You’re welcome anytime.”

         Sakura smiled, equal parts charmed and flustered. “As long as it’s okay with your uncle, of course. I wouldn’t want to assume…”

         “Nonsense,” he replied smoothly, dragging his eyes from her form to somewhere behind her. “Right, Uncle?”

         “That remains to be seen,” Mr. Uchiha said, ever blandly.

         Sakura straightened her back almost violently at the intonation of his voice and turned her torso slightly to look at him. While it wasn’t a particularly flattering response, it heated her skin in memory of Friday afternoon. She hadn’t considered how her body was going to react to being near him again, but she could already tell it was going to be a trying session. Her heart hammered in her ears, and she was so, _so_ excited for no reason whatsoever.

         With his midnight-black hair damp, disheveled, and partially hanging across his face, he presented an even more devastating image than his usual tidy one. She was doomed.

         “Follow me, Ms. Haruno,” the Uchiha patriarch said with little ceremony. He beckoned for her to accompany him as he passed by the kitchen doorway and through to where Naruto and Sasuke had gone.

         “Excuse me, Obito,” Sakura squeaked apologetically, offering a stilted bow to the inclination of his head, before scurrying after Mr. Uchiha.

         She smoothed down her skirt—a regular black one a little shorter than her uniform but still modestly below the knees. Her navy-blue cotton blouse, a long-sleeved V-neck, exposed her prominent collarbone, which had been misted with a delicately scented fragrance. Her makeup, as always, was understated, but she followed Ino’s lead and glossed her thin lips once again. Her outfit was as bold as she dared, showcasing only a hint of skin while maintaining a strict sense of propriety.

         The three of them—Naruto having been snagged along the way—settled in what could only be Mr. Uchiha’s personal office, located up a flight of stairs, adjacent to the closed door of his bedroom, and down the hall from Sasuke’s bedroom. Bookcases circumscribed a handsome oak desk in the middle of the room, and every shelf held texts or sentimental paraphernalia. The surface of the desk was organized similar to its counterpart at the high school; papers, held together with clips and staples, were neatly stacked to one side, and a desk lamp, clear of dust, illuminated the glossy wood. Two comfortable chairs awaited them on the opposite side.

         Sakura slid her backpack off and busied herself with unloading her burden, consisting of plenty of paper, mechanical pencils, and all of the assigned books, as instructed, at her corner of the desk, and Naruto soon did the same at his corner.

         After he closed the door, Mr. Uchiha dropped into his own chair and idly drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk, waiting for them to narrow their undivided attention on him. “So, what would you say gives you the most trouble in my class, Mr. Uzumaki—other than breathing and thinking at the same time?”

         “Everything,” Naruto muttered, ignoring the insult in favor of, for once, sucking up his pride. He knew how important this was, that he couldn’t afford to slack or cause a fight. “I just can’t remember all the terms, and, when you tell us to analyze books, I don’t know what you’re lookin’ for, exactly. Like, how am I supposed to know what the author meant?”

         Mr. Uchiha pondered his words for a few moments before instructing him to take out his notebook and ready his pencil. Despite not being acknowledged, Sakura did the same to keep Naruto motivated. To start with, their teacher went over each literary term in depth, twisting their definitions in a way that the blond boy, with his brow furrowed in rare concentration, could follow.

         “Okay, a theme is an idea, and a symbol is an object… I think I’m gettin’ it!”

         “Indeed.” At some point, he had started peeling the orange he brought with him. “Read the first paragraph of _Valley of Waste_ to yourself and tell me if you think there’s a theme or symbol there.”

         Sakura felt a little put-out—completely ignored. Mr. Uchiha knew she didn’t require any tutoring and didn’t ask her to answer his questions or write down his mini-lectures. Even when she shifted her leg, accidentally knocking her knee against his under the desk, he didn’t once react to her presence, looking far too interested in his snack.

         Naruto hummed in contemplation as he finished reading. “Y’know, I think it’s kind of weird that the author said so much about that bird showin’ up. Makes it seem important. Maybe that’s because it’s a symbol?”

         “My, my, we _are_ learning something today. Very good. Based on the symbol and the protagonist’s imprisonment, you could expect ‘freedom’ as a prevalent theme, wouldn’t you say? It’s often synonymous with birds.”

         “Well… I guess so, yeah. I mean, who wants to read a book about someone who sits in a cage the whole time? There’s no action.”

         “Hn. You’d be surprised what sort of battles can be fought in the mind.”

         Sakura hid her frown in her hand as she cupped her chin and propped her face up with her elbow. As proud of Naruto as she was, she didn’t want to sit stagnant the entire time. Should she have not intruded on the tutoring? After all, she still had questions to ask Obito, and she wanted to catch him before he fell asleep again. She debated how to best take her leave.

         “If ‘freedom’ is the theme, why does he lock himself up again?” Naruto asked, appearing legitimately puzzled.

         “He knows he has trouble controlling his anger and is prone to blackouts, during which he hurts some of the villagers in the crossfire. The point of the story is learning to let go of the past.”

         “Then why does he let his friend in when he knows seein’ her like that is gonna piss him off so badly? I mean, _of course,_ he’s gonna want revenge on the guys who did that to her.”

         “Perhaps… he simply couldn’t help himself.” Mr. Uchiha’s eyes darted toward Sakura for the briefest moment. She blinked back to attention. “Even the strongest-willed man can fall bewitched to a woman if she puts her mind to it.”

         “That’s why they end up fucking, huh?” Naruto retorted dryly, making Sakura jolt. He nonchalantly scratched at his chin. “Why’d you pick such a dirty book, anyway?”

         “It’s my duty as a teacher to prepare my students; some of the passages are on Konoha University’s entrance exam.”

         “Not _those_ ones?”

         “No, Mr. Uzumaki. Not those ones.”

         Naruto snickered triumphantly to himself.

         “Tell me, Ms. Haruno,” Mr. Uchiha began decisively, holding her senses aloft, “what do you find gives you the most trouble in my class?”

         “Bathroom break!” the blond boy abruptly declared, racing out of the room after flinging the door wide open. He had a terrible habit of holding it until the very last moment and leaving everything in the dust. “Hey, Sasuke, where’s your bathroom at?!”

         “Oh. Um…” Sakura fought for something to say. “I guess I would have to say…”

         In the awkward silence, he offered one of his orange slices to her, and she gratefully accepted it, brushing fingertips with his. It was very decadent—sweeter than she expected—and she wanted another taste, particularly that of the slice he just popped into his mouth.

         “Can I have more?”

         He smirked faintly at her, lounging back in his chair and appraising her with a thorough, languid gaze that made her feel terribly vulnerable. Just when she thought he was going to decline her by way of prolonged silence, he asked, “What are you prepared to do?”

         Sakura’s breath caught, and she leaned forward, as if to chase him. Her answer, ill-filtered, came out as a sinful murmur that barely breached the gap between them: “ _Anything._ ”

         “Then come get it,” he dared, low and dark, devouring another piece of the steadily vanishing orange. His onyx-black eye, the only one not covered by his spiky hair, pierced her. The sleeves of the dark buttoned-up shirt he wore were pushed up, exposing his forearms, which he rested on the arms of his seat. She desperately wanted them pressed against her back, to feel them twitch and clench as his ironclad self-control faltered.

         Her pale eyelashes fluttered at the enticingly graveled quality of his voice. She entertained half-formed fantasies of what she would do if she had the courage, but both of them knew she was far too timid to approach a man like him. And Naruto was due back at any moment.

         Still, how she _yearned._

         How he knew she _yearned._

         “You’re practically salivating,” Mr. Uchiha observed mercilessly. “Always more fixated on my mouth than the words coming out of it.”

         The Uchiha family was rife with insufferable teases, men who thought they were too beautiful to behold, untouchable to mere mortals such as herself. They were arrogant, conceited, and wicked creatures—Sasuke and his uncle especially.

         After years of rebuff, Sakura was desperate to hold her own. Swallowing her anxiety, she stood from her chair, placed her hands on his desk, and shifted forward to loom suggestively over him. He eyed her with mild interest, and she strongly resisted the urge to tug her neckline up when his gaze dropped about her throat.

         Mr. Uchiha’s smirk held fast until he broke it to eat. During his momentary distraction, one of Sakura’s hands shot out. She stole the remainder of the fruit, plopped back down in her chair, and enjoyed another succulent slice.

         Wholly unfazed by her theft, he crossed his arms.

         “Want them back?” she whispered, hoping he didn’t notice the tremble in her wrists. The tip of her tongue flicked across her upper lip, tasting the flavored lip gloss smeared there. Their little game was escalating bit-by-bit, still relatively tame, but she was already so bothered. “Come get them.”

         Before Mr. Uchiha could answer, Naruto, oblivious to the tension that had formed in his absence, bounded back in and effectively killed the mood by praising the toilet paper. Sakura quickly finished the fruit before her friend noticed it.


	8. Terrible Truths

> _“Don’t look so gloomy, Sakura,”_ he told her with a minute arching of his lips. It was meant to console her, but it simply couldn’t be classified as a smile in this situation, not when it held none of his former cheer, falsified or otherwise. _“It’s nothing I can’t handle.”_

Over the next few hours, Mr. Uchiha tutored Naruto with the determination to send him out the door with at least one new fact permanently imprinted on his most troublesome student.

         Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement: He drilled each term into the blond boy’s mind and challenged him to assign each label to parts of their current novel. Tragedy, mythology, satire, fable, biography: He provided random passages and asked him to identify their genres based on context clues. Third-person omnipotent versus limited; static versus dynamic characters; suspense versus tension; protagonist, deuteragonist, tritagonist, antihero, antagonist—

         He stuffed weeks of lessons into that mildly stressful, three-hour block.

         Naruto’s comprehension problems ran deeper than literary analysis, but it was a solid start. He wasn’t stupid; he simply grew up in a world entertained more by moving pictures than motionless text. One who didn’t read for leisure couldn’t understand the allure of a novel just by looking at the cover, by flipping through it without absorbing any of the words, by obsessing over the overwhelming number of pages instead of the sense of adventure contained therein. Mr. Uchiha understood the plight of the newer generations and did his best to adapt, to present the information in a way that wrangled his student’s wandering attention.

         Even Sakura, following the lesson with rapt attention, learned a litany of new things by lunchtime. What had begun as a way to motivate her friend ended in a page full of helpful tips that they hadn’t even covered in class or the after-school coaching sessions. Not for the first time, she thanked whomever was listening for putting them in his class.

         “Well,” Mr. Uchiha began as they finished up, “I can only hope I didn’t just waste my entire morning on you.”

         “It wasn’t a waste, I promise!” Naruto assured him, tucking his things back into his backpack. Despite having been knee-deep in academics on a Saturday morning, he wore a content grin. He popped his stiff joints with a few stretches. “Thanks a lot—really. I learned so much today. But… think we can do this again next Saturday? I’ve still got a bunch of questions.”

         Quickly, Sakura chirped, “Count me in!” as she put her own things away.

         “We’ll see what happens next week.”

         “Cool! So… you’re not kickin’ us out just yet, are you?” Naruto laughed sheepishly, folding his arms behind his head. “Sasuke wanted to hang out.”

         Mr. Uchiha snorted. “If you remember not to make so much noise, you can leave whenever you want. Lunch will be ready within the hour—remind Sasuke for me.”

         “Definitely! Thanks, Mr. U!”

         “Hn.”

         Naruto sped out of the room with his belongings. Left behind with Mr. Uchiha again, Sakura found some measure of fascination in watching him tidy up the surface of his desk.

         “Thank you,” she said, “for tutoring Naruto. I know he left pretty abruptly, but I can tell it meant a lot to him.”

         “Yes, well, there may be a future for him yet.”

         Delicately clearing her throat, Sakura rose from her chair and headed for the door. Hesitation soon stilled her step, and she unabashedly observed him while he bent over a lower drawer. His face was concealed by the sweep of his long hair, which easily reached the floor and pooled over the gleaming wood. Hair of such tremendous length required an eternity to fully dry on its own. Hours after showering, it looked soft and voluminous, boasting an almost ethereal blue sheen.

         She became obsessed with the desire to run her fingers through it—so, taking courage from their tentative flirtations, she banished her reservations and just… _did it._ Reaching out, she parted the dark curtain with her fingers and combed her way down the thick strands. His mane was sheared at different lengths to give it the illusion of being spiky, and she had to work through a few tangles as she knelt to reach the ends. He probably had to brush it often just to keep control of it.

         As Sakura sampled the texture of his strands, Mr. Uchiha ignored her ministrations until he found what he was looking for. Gently tugging his locks out of her loose grip and flipping them over his shoulder, he straightened back up and transferred a file folder to his school briefcase.

         “You have beautiful hair,” she mumbled shyly, not quite ready to leave just yet. With such brief and erratic moments to be alone with him, she couldn’t bear to leave things unsaid. He already knew her feelings; what harm could a well-deserved compliment inflict?

         The corners of his mouth twitched into a not-quite smile, catching her off-guard. “So do you.”

         Her breath hitched. She saw the opportunity for what it was and dashed for it. “Y-you… Thank you. Um, how do you know? You haven’t, er, t-touched it.”

         Mr. Uchiha spun his chair around to fully face her, crossing one leg over his other knee. As he did, Sakura, still on her knees, leaned forward and silently offered up her own pastel-pink locks for judgment. It then occurred to her how suggestive the position could appear to an onlooker, but such concerns all but dissipated when he placed a large hand on the crown of her head.

         She made a small, contented noise as he raked his blunt nails across her scalp and smoothed her hair down. There wasn’t much to comb through, as she wore it relatively short, but he followed a tuft to the end, slowly allowing each strand to bounce free from between his fingertips. He repeated the process a few times, lulling her into complacency with the pleasurable sensations. She listened to his even breathing, the creak of his chair as he shifted, and her own whispery sighs.

         Finally, he released her and settled back. “My previous opinion stands.”

         Sakura, feeling raw and vulnerable from his tender motions, folded her hands in her lap and looked up at him with wide eyes. She licked her dry lips and parted them to speak, even without knowing exactly what to say to him after such intimacy. “Mr. Uchiha, I…”

         “I need to prepare lunch,” he interrupted, gentle but firm. “Why don’t we continue this conversation at a later time, Ms. Haruno?”

         “Of course. I’m sorry,” she sputtered, jumping to her feet. With a rosy flush across her cheeks, she hurried away.

* * *

Naruto and Sasuke had disappeared. Sakura cursed the part of her that still cherished the Uchiha boy as more than a friend, the part that always protested being left out or behind. As she wondered where they were hiding—what they were doing without her—she searched a few rooms on her way back downstairs.

         They had left a tornado-quality mess in Sasuke’s bedroom, but she could find no indication of where they had gone in the strewn clothing, toppled game boxes, and Naruto’s abandoned backpack. The closed door beside Sasuke’s room opened on another bedroom consisting of only the basic essentials: bed, desk, and armoire. She concluded it to be Itachi’s and immediately ducked back out, closing the door behind her. The only other room she hadn’t been in on this floor was Mr. Uchiha’s bedroom, but, comfortable enough to assume they wouldn’t be in there, she didn’t dare to intrude.

         The Uchiha patriarch was rustling around in the kitchen when she padded back down the stairs and passed the doorway. Itachi, having arrived at some point during the morning, read by himself in the living room, and Obito and Bu, like her friends, were missing.

         She cautiously approached the most laconic of the Uchiha siblings. Out of all of them, Itachi intimidated her the most. He had a way of making her feel like her presence was a nuisance even though experience told her that he was a good person. Like an insect mindlessly ramming into a warm light bulb, it seemed like she never had a good enough reason to justify disturbing him. “Um, excuse me, Itachi…”

         For some time, Itachi didn’t react, making her flinch with mortification over the thought of having to repeat herself. Finally, after finishing his paragraph, he lowered his book and dispassionately offered his attention.

         “Do you know where Naruto and Sasuke went?” she asked timidly.

         He didn’t even have to think about it. “The woods behind the house.”

         “Oh.” Sakura craned her neck to peer out a nearby window at the woods in question. The boys had a massive lead on her. Getting lost didn’t sound like a great way to spend her afternoon. “What about Obito?”

         “His room.”

         “Do you think he’s sleeping?”

         Itachi made a contemplative noise and swept his long bangs out of his face. “I don’t think so, but you can knock.”

         “Thank you. I’m sorry for disturbing you.” With a grateful bow, she made to turn away and let him resume his reading, but she happened to catch the author’s name as he lifted the novel again. Unable to help herself, she awkwardly babbled, “Oh, Kirimato—I love his books, especially his supernatural murder mysteries. I haven’t read that one yet, but I can already tell you’ve made a good choice.”

         “I know. I’ve read it before,” Itachi quipped wryly.

         “Ah. Right. Well…” Sakura laughed a little too loudly and went on her way—but not before catching the second-eldest brother’s secretive little smile over the edge of his book. Had she ever seen him smile? Certainly not since Sasuke was a little boy. Invigorated by her victory, she finally left him in peace and rounded the corner into Obito’s dim corridor.

         Her knuckles struck the door with two soft raps, just loud enough to be heard. The muffled call of, “Come in!” prompted her to turn the doorknob and let herself into the bedroom.

         The first thing she noticed was the cluster of wires and game consoles set up beneath a large television against the right-hand wall. Just beyond that was an ajar door leading into a dim bathroom. To her left, a queen-sized bed held rumpled sheets, haphazard pillows, a twisted mass of comforters and quilts, and a bundle of slumbering Bu. Somewhere among it all was a shirtless Obito, who sat up to greet her.

         Although he hid his facial deformity with one hand, Sakura saw clearly that it continued down his neck, over his shoulder, along his arm and torso, and across his hip before disappearing beneath his loose lounge pants. His hip, in particular, was fiercely bruised and scabbed, like he frequently raked his nails over it and caught the unnatural dips in his skin. She guiltily averted her eyes.

         “Sakura,” he said, bemused. He reached for his discarded shirt and pulled it over his head. “I didn’t know it was you.”

         “It’s okay,” she insisted, indecisively hovering over the threshold with one foot inside the room and the other outside. “May I come in?”

         “Yeah.” Obito gestured for her to join him, and, leaving the door open behind her, she took that as permission to approach his bed. “What’s up?”

         “Sasuke and Naruto ditched me…”

         He chuckled at her pout. “I saw.”

         Sakura glanced out the window behind him. The blinds were modestly cracked, affording a stilted view of the woods beyond the fields and allowing the barest amount of light to spill across the wooden floor. As she wondered why he drew the blinds against the sun, she was reminded of a certain English classroom. Maybe it was an Uchiha preference?

         “Tutoring went well?”

         “Very. I think Naruto actually learned a few things today.” She paused. “Mr. Uchiha is making lunch now. He said it’ll be done soon.”

         Obito scrutinized her. “You know, whatever you want to ask me, you can. I kind of figure that’s why you’re here.”

         Sakura blushed in shame and settled on the edge of his bed. She made it a point to take up as little room as possible. “I’m that transparent?”

         “Hn,” he agreed. “The small talk feels _a little_ forced since we’ve never really had a conversation. Just the two of us, I mean.”

         “I’m sorry. I haven’t been… avoiding you or anything like that.”

         “I know, but why are you apologizing? You’re not obligated to befriend me just because I lurk around the same house your friend lives in.”

         “‘Lurk’?” Sakura laughed, turning her torso slightly to better see him. Slowly, she began to relax into the flow of conversation. “No, that’s too sinister of a word for you. You’re so warm and cheerful—always the brightest thing in the room.”

         With a touch of sarcasm, Obito opened his palm toward his dark room. “That’s saying something in here.”

         He kept his tone somewhat lighthearted, probably for her benefit, but something about his self-deprecating streak prickled her. Drawing her knees under her and fully turning to face him, she studied the crease of his brow and the intensity in the dark stare that he shared with his family members. In that moment, wearing a frown, he looked more Uchiha than he ever had.

         “Can I ask you something?” Sakura began, growing tense and self-conscious like she did with Itachi and Mr. Uchiha—and Sasuke on his especially terrible days.

         “Go for it.”

         “How did it happen? Your elasticity problem?”

         “Yeah. I thought so.” Obito blew out a frustrated breath and raked his fingers through his short hair, making her regret asking. Before she could apologize and retract her question, he gave a short nod. “I tried to commit suicide about eight years ago.”

         A chill slithered through Sakura, but she didn’t have time to process it before he launched into his story with brutal, naked honesty. According to him, he had been in love with a young woman and childhood friend named Rin, who comforted him through the death of his parents and the crumbling of his family in the aftermath. As a kind-hearted and giving soul, Rin viewed her own problems as inconsequential compared to his. She hid her emotions so she could be the unbreakable pillar that he needed. Thus, her unexpected suicide, following a few years later, broke him to his very core.

         “She was fine one day,” he recalled distractedly, distancing himself from the horror of his own words with practiced apathy. “Dead the next.”

         Obito, waiting to carpool with his uncle for lunch, had learned about Rin’s suicide through a phone call from a mutual friend, Kakashi, and unthinkingly took it out on him. He reacted purely on the tortured wrenching of his own heart and quite literally lost his mind in the whirlwind of black and white that ensued.

         “I was already on antidepressants. My father also left behind a ton of medication when he died.” He jerked his chin toward the bathroom door. “I don’t even remember what any of it said; I just opened all the bottles and swallowed whatever I could. There were probably nine or ten different bottles.”

         He didn’t remember much after that. Third-party sources told him that he suffered a seizure and cracked his head on the way down, hard enough to trigger a bleed in his brain.

         “How,” Sakura whispered, frozen with fright through the onslaught, “did you survive?”

         “Madara. He was late to pick me up, but he showed up just in time to roll me on my side and call an ambulance.”

         She closed her eyes, which had begun to mist with tears. Fuzzy shapes in her mind sharpened to clarity as she pictured Mr. Uchiha arriving home to find his nephew seizing on the ground, surrounded by empty pill bottles. What she couldn’t imagine was the expression on his face, the words he spoke, _how_ he spoke them. Even in a terrifying situation, he hadn’t allowed his emotions to hinder him even for a moment and managed to rescue Obito from the very brink of death.

         “Itachi is grateful to Madara for saving me,” Obito continued, “but Sasuke can only focus on _why_ he was late. In his words, if Madara hadn’t been busy getting fired and humiliating himself, I wouldn’t have felt so desperate to kill myself. I would’ve had someone here to comfort me.”

         Sakura wiped away her tears and sniffled. “No. That’s not fair.”

         “Try telling that to Sasuke. Itachi and I have talked to him over and over again about it, but he’s stubborn. He needs someone to blame who isn’t me. But Madara doesn’t seem to care that Sasuke hates him, so we just don’t talk about it anymore.”

         “I see…” She wrung her hands in her lap for a few long moments while she fitfully absorbed the new information. “And what caused your elasticity problem?”

         “Well, you can’t really predict what will happen when you mix medications, especially when you don’t know what they are,” he pointed out, blase. “In my case, the right side of my body began to break down. By the time doctors could synthesize a treatment, the scarring had become what you see now. Nobody has been able to come up with a way to reverse the damage and cure it.”

         “That’s…” There was no word for what she was hearing. Horrible, terrible, awful: Such words didn’t even begin to describe his trauma and the trauma of the Uchiha household in general. Sakura wasn’t Naruto; she couldn’t muster the right sequence of syllables to lift the tension. She bit her tongue and sent her gaze back to her hands.

         “That’s why Madara is always on my case. I get it—he feels partially responsible for not being here when he was supposed to be, and he’s still angry about what happened at Konoha University that day. But it can be annoying… Itachi is suffering because of it, too. There are classes he needs for his degree, but he can’t take some of them because he has to fit everything into a night schedule, all so he can be available to babysit me.” Obito sighed wearily. “It’s a goddamn mess.”

         She scooted forward to gently take his limp left hand between hers, comforted by the living warmth radiating from his skin. “I’m… _so glad_ you’re still alive. And I’m sorry you felt like you had no other option. I was only a kid at the time, but… I wouldn’t have let you feel so alone, if there was anything I could’ve done.”

         Obito shook his head. “I’m not expecting anything from you, Sakura. You asked, so I told you.”

         “I know, but…” She trailed off as approaching footsteps interrupted the somber mood sifting over them like a mourning-black veil.

         “Obito, are you awake? Your—” As Mr. Uchiha entered the bedroom, his eyes slid from Obito to Sakura and back again. “Your new doctor has arrived.”

         With a meaningful squeeze of her fingers, Sakura released him and pushed up from the bed. She made to quietly excuse herself from the room to give them privacy, but another figure blocked her exit before she could take more than three steps.

         “I’m Dr. Yahiko Pein,” the new arrival intoned in a solemn voice that resonated like a bass note on a church organ. Brushing past Mr. Uchiha, he revealed another person’s silhouette behind him. “And this is my nurse, Konan. How are you feeling, Obito?”

         Dr. Pein had moved from the shadows and into the muted light. Like with the first time she saw Obito’s deformities, Sakura didn’t mean to stare, but she couldn’t help herself. How could a doctor—no, how could _anyone_ wear so many piercings at once? Her gaze darted from each stud and bar, counting an excruciating twenty-two in all, even in places she never thought could be pierced. It made her own skin pinch with empathy.

 _That looks so painful. And unprofessional,_ she thought, taking in his spiky orange hair and long white lab coat buttoned up to his solid-black tie and crisp dark collar.

         “Pain’s about a six right now,” Obito admitted. Unlike Sakura, he had the presence of mind not to gawk, if he found anything unusual about his doctor’s appearance. He turned his face away to look out the window. “But that’s normal for me.”

         While the doctor scribbled something down on his clipboard, his nurse, Konan, wheeled a cart of supplies and machines into the room. The single piercing sitting snug beneath her stern lower lip glinted. The blue-haired woman took no notice of anything in the room other than her own duties as she unfolded metal trays and filled a basin with alcohol. Donning a pair of purple latex gloves, she began sterilizing an array of tools and laying them out on a wide strip of gauze.

         “We’ll begin with tests to assess your current condition,” Dr. Pein said, even and unhurried, making each and every syllable ring clear, “so we can put together a treatment plan and research our future options. I’ve already received your family’s history from Madara, but we still have a few questions.”

         Sakura observed Konan’s practiced fingers and unfaltering procedure. Unusual appearances aside, they made for a coolly clinical pair, and she hoped beyond hope that they would be able to find a cure for Obito where others had failed.

         Mr. Uchiha caught her eye and motioned for her to leave. She hesitated for a few seconds to silently wish the eldest Uchiha brother good luck. Seemingly receiving her telepathic signals—or growing bored of the view outside—Obito turned back around as Dr. Pein approached his bedside with a stethoscope. He made eye contact with her.

         “Don’t look so gloomy, Sakura,” he told her with a minute arching of his lips. It was meant to console her, but it simply couldn’t be classified as a smile in this situation, not when it held none of his former cheer, falsified or otherwise. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

         Then he sneezed so hard that he ruptured the blood vessels around his irises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep. Dr. Pein. I went there.  
> In my defense, Yahiko doesn’t seem to have a known last name, so I was forced into it. If it somehow wasn’t clear, Dr. Yahiko Pein is the Deva Path, not the actual Yahiko, who has a vastly different personality.  
> “Pain’s about a six right now.” (I’m awful.)


	9. Tentative Steps

> It wasn’t like Sakura loved him and was looking for something permanent. She wanted affection and sex, plain and simple. He was the most attractive man she had ever laid eyes on, and she believed that she had a chance—something she would never have with Sasuke no matter how long she pined.

It was business as usual when Monday morning arrived. Almost a month of the fall semester had passed, and October was approaching on a crisp breeze that dissipated by the time the sun reached its highest point in the sky.

         English began with an announcement about the first of a series of class projects. Each part contributed to what would become their final project: a short story to be submitted to the National Committee for Young Writers in mid-December, just one week before the semester was due to end. Mr. Uchiha had already taken the liberty of registering the names of all of his students.

         “I’ve been asked to assist in flagging the best entries,” he had said as the class buzzed with an undercurrent of excitement. “Impress me, and I’ll make sure you don’t get brushed aside in the final judging round.”

         Naturally, it wasn’t the prospect of being forced to write that had everyone whispering; it was the prizes for those lucky enough to be the top ten winners. All ten stories would be published individually under one of the best publishers, Kuroi Hana Publishing Group, a subsidiary of the Kumogakure-based mega-corporation of the same name. Cash prizes ranged from one million yen for first place to one hundred thousand yen for tenth place. Finally, the first-prize winner would receive a full-ride scholarship to their university of choice.

         Competition promised to be fierce with over three hundred thousand registered contestants and more still expected to filter in just before the October 13 deadline.

         “This week, I want you to start by creating a protagonist, an antagonist, and a conflict. Every writer begins by envisioning a conflict and the two most significant influences of that conflict—the push and pull,” Mr. Uchiha continued over the class’s whispering. “If you have a plague, you might consider causing it and then curing it. If it’s a war, you need opposing sides. If it’s a lost relic, perhaps someone finds it while someone else steals it.”

         “Does the conflict have to be so bold and dramatic?” Sakura asked even though she already knew the answer. “Could it be as simple as… let’s say, two people trying to find some common ground with each other?”

         He acknowledged her with languid, half-lidded appraisal. It was far from one of his usual looks and succeeded in sending a dangerous thrill through her. “Who am I to limit your creativity? Do whatever you wish if you think you can impress me.”

         She hid her smile, suddenly giddy.

         For the first half of the class, they were permitted to start on their new projects, mostly because Mr. Uchiha had to step out of the classroom to answer a personal phone call. The tight set of his jaw suggested that it was Dr. Pein with some kind of results about Obito.

         Tapping her pencil against her cheek while she formulated an idea of what to write, Sakura happened to glance back at Naruto to see how he was faring after the tutoring session. She was both startled and invigorated by how eagerly he scribbled in his notebook and immediately dropped her eyes to put more effort into her own work.

         What did she want to write about? Although academically minded, Sakura didn’t consider herself particularly creative or imaginative. She enjoyed a degree of realism in the things she read, experiences that she could personally relate to, emotions that were within her scope to feel. By the time Mr. Uchiha returned from the hallway, she still hadn’t written anything down, though a few vague ideas floated among her thoughts.

         “Mr. U,” Naruto called out as their teacher shut the door, “I’m done.”

         “This is not a collaborative exercise,” he was swiftly warned. “You’re free to maintain your dignity.”

         A blank stare was his answer.

         “Hn. Bring it to me, and I’ll read it.”

         Naruto flew from his seat and bounded up to his desk, brandishing his notebook with obnoxiously overflowing pride. Mr. Uchiha picked it up and perused it for a few silent moments.

         “I can always count on Mr. Uzumaki to bring up the mistakes some of you are likely to encounter,” he said at last. “Character flaws—in this case, they’re not something you should avoid.”

         Even as the criticism flowed easily, Sakura spotted the way Mr. Uchiha gave Naruto a subtle nod of approval and dismissed him back to his seat. Her friend was practically glowing with accomplishment.

         “Why would he want his character to be flawed?” Hinata asked softly, a rare occurrence in this class. Sakura would have dissected the shy girl’s expression if it didn’t mean turning all the way around in her seat to see it.

         “What is the point of reading something if you can’t take something out of it, such as knowledge, a lesson, or entertainment?” Mr. Uchiha rebuffed. “If his character is perfection personified, he’s not likely to fail, right?”

         “I-I suppose…”

         “Where’s the struggle? The character development, the adventure? It’s just self-indulgence at that point; you’re the only one who sees the appeal. Simply put, it’s _boring._ Flaws give depth, a path for your readers to delve further into your story and sympathize with your characters.”

         “What if we’re only writing for ourselves?” Choji chimed in cheekily.

         “Then you won’t have a chance of winning the competition, which is the whole point of the project. Nevertheless, your perspective is not entirely unappreciated, Mr. Akimichi. Some writers wish they could be so lucky as to write for themselves. Do as you wish if it pleases you.”

         For the rest of the lesson, their diligent teacher emphasized flaws and quirks, of making a character exist in the world instead of being plastered over it like a two-dimensional deity. By the time the bell rang, each student had the stirrings of a story in mind.

* * *

During lunchtime, Sakura approached Ino’s usual table, consisting of Hinata, Tenten, and Temari. She plopped her burden, an encyclopedia-sized gift box, down in front of Ino. It was twined in several layers of crimson-red silk ribbon, secured with a bow that curled charmingly at the ends, and printed with images of multicolored confetti and wispy spirals. “Happy birthday, Pig!”

         “Aw,” Ino cooed, reaching for the bow with greedy little fingers, “you remembered!”

         “Of course. You never let me forget when we were younger, so I made sure not to this year.”

         Her deadpan wrung stifled laughter from Tenten and a smirk from Temari. With a good-natured roll of her eyes, Ino set the bow aside and started on the ribbon. “Jeez. You make me sound like an absolute tyrant.”

         “You almost bit my head off for forgetting to bring you something,” Temari said wryly.

         Ino shot her a look. “ _Shhh._ ”

         “‘Forehead, let me give you some advice about the art of gift-giving,’” Sakura mocked haughtily, squishing the end of her nose with one finger. “‘It should be flashy—but not too flashy, or it’ll seem insincere. A thought-provoking bouquet is always nice but only when paired with something everlasting.’”

         “Well, _someone_ had to lecture you so you wouldn’t re-gift body lotion and fuzzy aloe socks that you got for Christmas.”

         “What am I supposed to do with that stuff?” she demanded. “Seemed like a waste to just throw it away. Besides, you love fuzzy aloe socks.”

         Ino turned her nose up and harrumphed. “That’s completely beside the point. If you’re going to give someone a gift, it should be meaningful—as in, you specifically picked it out for the person you’re giving it to.”

         Teasing aside, Sakura and Ino shared a private glance, one with softened edges and affection. The top of the gift box came off, revealing the contents between layers of pastel-pink tissue paper. Ino lifted the first object she encountered to better inspect it.

         “I didn’t see you at the summer festival this year,” Sakura said, “so… I bought you a souvenir.”

         “My grandfather was sick,” her blonde friend murmured, examining the artisan picture frame with gentle eyes. “I was out of town for most of the summer.”

         The frame depicted the dense, nighttime forest encompassing their city, with individual leaves lit up by fireworks explosions in the midnight canopy of the sky and swaying lanterns. The carvings were intricate, as were the brush strokes that brought them to clarity. Below the picture slotted into the frame were grooves spelling out the words, “Konohagakure Summer Festival 2019.”

         Sakura knew Ino loved collecting memoirs from their local festival and had at least one item from each summer since she was six years old. Despite their issues over Sasuke, there always remained a spot, albeit tiny and easily overlooked, in her heart for her friend. She had paid attention. She had worried and wondered and yearned for what they once had. Pride and jealousy seemed like pointless endeavors now, and, more than anything, she wanted her to understand that.

         She had tactfully chosen a picture of when they were children. The quality was blurry, the colors a little washed out, but there was no denying the fervor of their toothy smiles as they posed for the camera, mouths stained blue and red from shaved ice. With their cheeks pressed together and arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, clad in colorful yukatas, they made for an inseparable pair.

         Ino smiled up at her, blue eyes sparkling, reminiscent of the day in question. Perhaps she had always felt the same way. “Thanks, Forehead. You’ve really outdone yourself with this one.”

         Sakura simply smiled back.

         “And what’s this?” Ino set the frame aside and reached for the second gift that had been hidden beneath it. She flipped through the little handmade booklet and landed on a random page. “ _‘Free study sessions’?_ ”

         “Just what it says. If you ever need help in one of your classes, I will clear my entire day for a study session with you. That booklet is good for ten separate days.” Sakura briefly touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip before coyly adding, “Not that I’d turn you away if you really needed help, coupon or no coupon.”

         “You’re such a nerd! But what else can I expect from the youngest in our class? Always the overachiever,” Ino teased warmly. Her expression said plainly that she intended to cash in sometime—perhaps on Civics because it was a known fact that she hated that class and had trouble studying for it. “You have to wait until the end of March to become an adult like the rest of us, and everyone will still be a year older by then. C’mon, try to catch up, will you?”

         Sakura laughed and waved in farewell, turning to head back to her own lunch table.

         “And don’t think this means you’re off the hook about your mystery man!” her friend called after her.

        Mortified, she hurried her step just a bit.

* * *

Just over a week of coaching remained—five more sessions. Sakura knew she had to do _something_ before she inevitably ran out of excuses to see the object of her lust. Soon, there wouldn’t be any Saturday-morning tutoring or afterschool coaching to look forward to. Soon, she wouldn’t even be in his class.

         “I said it would take three weeks to cover the material, but it seems I have nothing left to teach you for the exam,” Mr. Uchiha began as she approached his desk with her usual chair. “There’s hardly a reason to continue meeting like this, Ms. Haruno.”

         “Well, there are still some things I want to learn, if you don’t mind,” Sakura said in a rush, sitting at his side and sliding her backpack off into her lap. “Not about the exam, though. I, uh, spoke with Obito on Saturday.”

         “Clearly. Would there be another reason for your sitting alone with him in his bedroom?”

         She sidestepped his sarcasm with a delicate clearing of her throat. “Why did you lose your job at Konoha University?”

         Mr. Uchiha peered at her under lowered lashes, conveying suspicion in that simple glance. “He didn’t tell you?”

         “Not everything.”

         “What _did_ he tell you, then?”

         Sakura summarized her conversation with Obito, shying away from the details of his attempted suicide and trying to keep it detached and vague. She didn’t know how he felt about it years later but hated the thought of inadvertently upsetting him.

         Despite her concerns, Mr. Uchiha’s expression never wavered, and he gave a nod when she concluded her explanation. To her immense relief, it didn’t seem to bother him that she held insider knowledge on his family’s private affairs. “You’re familiar with Hashirama Senju, are you not?”

         “Of course,” she said automatically. “He’s the dean of Konoha University. He introduced himself at a school assembly a few years ago and talked about the degrees and classes they offer.”

         “Before that, he was the head of the History department. The previous dean was looking to retire, and both of us were considered for the job.” Mr. Uchiha paused pointedly here, and the corners of his mouth deepened. “Senju was ultimately given the job. His first move was to fire me.”

         “But…” Sakura’s mouth popped open in outrage. “Wait, he could do that? Just like that?”

         “They both saw it as justified after I lost my composure. I insulted him and the dean for making what I saw as a, frankly, terribly stupid decision. I also accused Senju of paying his way in.”

         “Did he?”

         “I don’t know. Probably,” he retorted stiffly. It was clear that his anger over it had never truly left him. “Anyway, Obito insisted on planning a celebratory lunch before the decision was even made, but I was late because of my outburst. I forgot all about it when I saw Senju’s smug smile. And then… it happened to coincide with the death of his friend, of which I had no knowledge until after he was hospitalized.”

         Sakura clutched her bag tighter without realizing that she was doing it. “I see. Thank you for telling me, Mr. Uchiha.”

         He said nothing in response, perhaps lost in thought.

         Switching gears and wanting to diffuse the tense atmosphere, she tentatively asked, “So… what’s next? Are you ending the coaching sessions, then?”

         “It’s the next logical step since I’ve taught you everything you need to know. Unless you want to argue and find some obscure reason to continue seeing me after hours.”

         “Um, well, I—”

         “—I’m now painfully aware of what you want from me, and it has left me in a rather awkward position,” Mr. Uchiha explained while she snapped her mouth shut and listened intently. “Yes, the age of consent is thirteen years old in this country. I know you’re younger than your peers—not quite eighteen because your hard work allowed you to skip your last year of middle school.”

         “But the age of consent doesn’t apply here,” Sakura finished slowly, rising to her feet, “because of the age gap and your position of power over me. Because we’re not in what can be described as a ‘sincere, romantic relationship.’”

         “You’ve done your research, I see. Such overconfidence; it’s like you expected to put that knowledge to work someday.”

         “Not necessarily… Knowing is never a handicap,” she denied, even as she shifted into his space, sliding along the edge of his desk with careful steps.

         “You can’t give me legal consent,” Mr. Uchiha said, inching away when she filled the space between his spread knees, “but the laws for this exact situation are pitifully lax. You and I know I’d never be arrested for what is perceived as statutory rape. I might not even lose my job. You, however, will suffer a damaged reputation and be denied entry to every university in this country for it.”

         Sakura knew the consequences. She had mulled over them for hours and told herself it was more prudent to wait until she was a little older before pursuing him. While still taboo, it wouldn’t be blatantly illegal in that case. But patience had never been one of her strongest traits, and, coupled with the desire that held her captive, she found herself wanting to be stupidly reckless for once—to throw all caution to the wind and see where it took her. What if she lost interest in him by the time it was legal? What if he found someone and married them?

         Those weren’t things she could predict. With strict schedules and diets and goals filling out her day, where was the time for _truly_ living, for trying something new and experiencing sensations that she could never invoke on her own?

         It wasn’t like Sakura loved him and was looking for something permanent. She wanted affection and sex, plain and simple. He was the most attractive man she had ever laid eyes on, and she believed that she had a chance—something she would never have with Sasuke no matter how long she pined.

         “I know,” she told him, leaning forward. “I know all of that. I’m giving my consent, anyway.”

         “I’ll need to think about it,” he muttered, turning his head away when she neared his face.

         “That’s not a ‘no.’” Her voice shook, betraying any confidence she was able to fake, and her heart rate thundered deafeningly. Creeping her hand along his armrest, barely brushing the inside of his clothed arm, she couldn’t restrain herself when she placed a knee on the chair just shy of his groin. Potent arousal shot through her, electrifying every tiny hair on her skin. She had never been so turned on.

 _He smells so good,_ she thought, not for the first time, letting his cologne wash over her.

         “No. It’s not.” Mr. Uchiha’s expression gave nothing away; it was the bobbing in his throat that told her he wasn’t completely unaffected by her advances. Even so, his hands remained flat on his armrests, and his lips pursed in stern disapproval. He didn’t encourage her, but he didn’t push her away. He hovered in an indecisive middle ground.

         This observation alone kept her from running away.

         “You don’t strike me as a risk-taker,” he suddenly pointed out.

         “I’m not. But, then again, I’ve never wanted something quite this much,” Sakura admitted. “Do you… do you want me?”

         “I’ll think about it,” he repeated gruffly. She suspected that he would continue to shrink away from her if he weren’t already squashed against the back of his chair with nowhere left to go. “Now, Ms. Haruno, I’d put some distance between us, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to touch you… considering. Why don’t you head home? We’re done for today.”

         Reluctantly, she pulled back and collected her bag, listening to him release a heavy breath and, with a squeak of his chair, collect his briefcase. Admittedly, it was a rather cold dismissal, but she couldn’t fault him for it after having sprung her feelings on him so suddenly.

         A single thought held her composure together: _He didn’t say ‘no.’_


End file.
